Podcasts about Google Now

歡迎留言告訴我們你對這一集的想法： https://open.firstory.me/user/cl81kivnk00dn01wffhwxdg2s/comments Topic: 5.3 billion cellphones to become waste in 2022 More than 5 billion of the estimated 16 billion mobile phones possessed worldwide will likely be discarded or stashed away in 2022, experts said Thursday last week, calling for more recycling of the often hazardous materials they contain. 專家上週四表示，二〇二二年全球人口所擁有的計160億支手機中，有超過50億支可能會被丟棄或束之高閣，呼籲加強回收這些手機所含的危險物質。 Stacked flat on top of each other, that many disused phones would rise 50,000 kilometers, more than 100 times higher than the International Space Station, the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) research consortium found. 廢電子及電器設備處理指令（WEEE）研究聯盟發現，將這麼多的廢棄手機堆疊起來，會有五萬公里高，比國際太空站離地面的距離還高一百多倍。 Despite containing valuable gold, copper, silver, palladium and other recyclable components, almost all these unwanted devices will be hoarded, dumped or incinerated, causing significant health and environmental harm. 儘管這些不要的設備含有有價值的金、銅、銀、鈀及其他可回收成分，但幾乎全都會被囤積、丟棄或焚化，而對健康和環境造成重大危害。 “Smartphones are one of the electronic products of highest concern for us,” said Pascal Leroy, director-general of the WEEE Forum, a not-for-profit association representing 46 producer responsibility organizations. 「智慧手機是最令我們擔心的電子產品之一」，代表四十六個生產者責任組織的非營利協會 WEEE 論壇總幹事巴斯卡‧李若伊說。 “If we don't recycle the rare materials they contain, we'll have to mine them in countries like China or Congo,” Leroy told AFP. 「如果不回收這些手機裡的稀有材料，我們將不得不到中國或剛果等國家去開採」，李若伊對法新社表示。 Defunct cellphones are just the tip of the 44.48 million tonne iceberg of global electronic waste generated annually that is not recycled, according to the 2020 global e-waste monitor. 根據全球電子廢棄物監測機構二〇二〇年的數據，報廢的手機只是全球每年產生的4,448萬噸未回收電子廢棄物的冰山一角。 Many of the 5 billion phones withdrawn from circulation will be hoarded rather than dumped in the trash, according to a survey in six European countries from June to September 2022. 根據二〇二二年六月至九月在六個歐洲國家進行的一項調查，這五十億支不再使用的手機，其中有很多會被囤積起來，而不是丟進垃圾桶。 This happens when households and businesses forget cellphones in drawers, closets, cupboards or garages rather than bringing them in for repair or recycling. 家庭和企業將手機遺忘在抽屜、衣櫥、櫥櫃或車庫，而不是將它們拿去修理或回收，就是這種囤積的情況。 Up to five kilos of e-devices per person are currently hoarded in the average European family, the report found. 該報告發現，目前歐洲一般家庭中每人囤積的電子設備高達五公斤重。 According to the new findings, 46 percent of the 8,775 households surveyed considered potential future use as the main reason for hoarding small electrical and electronic equipment. 根據這項新發現，在接受調查的8,775戶家庭中，46%的家庭之所以囤積小型電器及電子設備，主要是因為覺得未來可能會用到它。 Another 15 percent stockpile their gadgets with the intention of selling them or giving them away, while 13 percent keep them due to “sentimental value”. 另有15%的人囤積他們的小裝置是為了要出售或是送人，而13%的人是因為「情感價值」而保留它。 Next Article Topic: The ‘Right to Repair' Movement Gains Ground If you buy a product — a car, a smartphone, or even a tractor — and it breaks, should it be easier for you to fix it yourself? 如果你買了一個產品，例如一輛汽車、一部智慧型手機，甚至是一台拖拉機，結果它壞了，是不是應該讓你自己修理起來更容易些呢？ Manufacturers of a wide range of products have made it increasingly difficult over the years to repair things, for instance by limiting availability of parts or by putting prohibitions on who gets to tinker with them. It affects not only game consoles or farm equipment, but cellphones, military gear, refrigerators, automobiles and even hospital ventilators, the lifesaving devices that have proved crucial this year in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. 多年來，許多種產品的製造商都讓維修變得愈來愈困難，比如限制零件的取得，或對何人有權動手維修施加限制。受影響的產品不止於遊戲主機或農用機具，還有手機、軍用設備、冰箱、汽車，甚至包括今年對抗新冠病毒疫情發揮關鍵作用的救生設備—醫院裡的呼吸器。 Now, a movement known as “right to repair” is starting to make progress in pushing for laws that prohibit restrictions like these. 現在，一項名為「維修權」的運動在推動禁止此類限制的立法上，正取得進展。 In August, Democrats introduced a bill in Congress to block manufacturers' limits on medical devices, spurred by the pandemic. In Europe, the European Commission announced plans in March for new right-to-repair rules that would cover phones, tablets and laptops by 2021. 今年8月，美國民主黨因防疫需要而在國會提出一項法案，旨在阻止製造商對醫療裝置設下限制。在歐洲，歐盟執行委員會3月宣布了新的維修權規定計畫，在2021年以前實施，涵蓋手機、平板電腦和筆記型電腦。 And in more than 20 statehouses nationwide, right-to-repair legislation has been introduced in recent years by both Republicans and Democrats. 近年來，在全美國20多個州的議會裡，共和黨和民主黨都提出了維修權法案。 Over the summer, the House advanced a funding bill that includes a requirement that the Federal Trade Commission complete a report on anti-competitive practices in the repair market and present its findings to Congress and the public. 今年夏天，眾議院推動了一項資助法案，其中責成聯邦貿易委員會做成一份關於維修市場反競爭行為的報告，並向國會和民眾提交調查結果。 The goal of right-to-repair rules, advocates say, is to require companies to make their parts, tools and information available to consumers and repair shops in order to keep devices from ending up in the scrap heap. They argue that the rules restrict people's use of devices that they own and encourage a throwaway culture by making repairs too difficult. 倡議人士表示，維修權規定的目的是要求企業向消費者和維修商家提供零組件、工具及資訊，以免這些裝置最終被扔進垃圾堆。他們主張，目前的慣例對人們使用自己的裝置設下限制，並透過讓維修變得太過困難的方式，助長了一種用完即丟的文化。 They also argue that it's part of a culture of planned obsolescence — the idea that products are designed to be short-lived in order to encourage people to buy more stuff. That contributes to wasted natural resources and energy use at a time when climate change requires movement in the opposite direction to rein in planet-warming emissions. 他們還認為，這是一種計畫性淘汰文化的一部分，即為了鼓勵人們購買更多東西，產品被設計成短命的。在氣候變遷需要採取反向行動來控制溫室氣體排放的此際，這助長了自然資源的浪費以及能源的使用。 Manufacturing a new device or appliance is still largely reliant on polluting sources of energy — electricity generated from burning fossil fuels, for instance — and constitutes the largest environmental impact for most products. 製造一種新設備或裝置在很大程度上，仍仰賴會造成汙染的能源，例如燃燒化石燃料產生的電力，對大多數產品而言，這正是構成最大環境影響的因素。 Source article: https://udn.com/news/story/6904/5015841 Next Article Topic: Help for Curing The Phone Addiction Like pretty much everyone, Susan Butler stares at her smartphone too much. But unlike most everyone, she took action, buying a $195 ring from a company called Ringly, which promises to “let you put your phone away and your mind at ease.” 和大多數人一樣，蘇珊．巴特勒盯著智慧手機看的時間太長了。不一樣的是，她採取了行動，從Ringly公司買了一只195美元的戒指，保證可「讓你手機放一旁，腦袋放輕鬆」。 Ringly does this by connecting its rings to a smartphone filter so that users can silence Gmail or Facebook notifications while preserving crucial alerts, which cause the ring to light up or vibrate. Ringly透過將戒指連接一個篩選程式辦到這一點，因此使用者可以讓Gmail或Facebook通知改為靜音，同時保留重要提示，這時戒指會發光或震動。 “Hopefully it will keep some distance between my phone and my hand,” said Ms. Butler, 27, a technology consultant who lives in Austin, Texas. 住在德州奧斯汀、27歲的科技顧問巴特勒說：「希望它能讓我的手機和我的手之間保持些距離。」 Given how quickly cellphones have taken over, it's easy to forget that they are still a relatively new technology. The first iPhone came out eight years ago. 手機快速地主導了人們的生活，很容易讓我們忘了它仍是相當新的科技。第一支iPhone問世不過是8年前的事。 Yet already people spend close to three hours a day looking at a mobile screen – and that excludes the time they spend actually talking on the phones. 然而已有人每天花近3小時看手機－這還不算實際用手機講電話的時間。 In a recent survey of smartphone use by Bank of America, about a third of respondents said they were “constantly” checking their smartphones, and a little more than two-thirds said that they went to bed with a smartphone by their side. New companies see a business opportunity in helping people cut back. 美國銀行最近一項智慧手機使用調查發現，約三分之一受訪者表示「不斷」查看手機；略多於三分之二的人說，睡覺時把手機放在身旁。一些新公司在幫助人們少用手機這件事上看到了商機。 “Technology has evolved so quickly that we have spiraled out of control and nobody has stopped to think about how this is going to impact our lives,” said Kate Unsworth, the founder of a British company, Kovert, that also makes high-tech jewelry to filter out everything but the most urgent stuff. 英國Kovert公司製造的高科技首飾能濾除最緊急資訊以外的所有訊息，創辦人凱特．安茲沃斯說：「科技發展飛快，讓我們失去掌控，沒有人停下來思考這一切會如何影響我們的生活。」 Smartwatches like the Apple Watch are designed to encourage more glancing and less phone checking. In June, Google and Levi's announced plans for a line of high-tech clothes that will allow people to do things like turn off a ringing phone by swiping their jacket cuff. Apple Watch之類智慧手表設計宗旨在於讓人多簡單過目，少滑手機。谷歌和Levi's六月宣布一項高科技服飾系列的合作計畫，讓人們能做拍打外套袖口就關掉手機響鈴之類的事。 Offtime limits customers' access to apps they overuse and produce charts on how much time they spend on their phones. Moment encourages people to share their phone use with friends to compete in a game of who can look at their phone the least. And Light Phone, a credit-card-size phone that does nothing but make and receive phone calls. Offtime程式限制顧客開啟過度使用的應用程式，並製作圖表顯示他們花在手機上的時間。Moment鼓勵人們和朋友分享自己使用手機的狀況並互相比賽，看看誰能最少看手機。還有信用卡大小的手機Light Phone，只能撥打及接聽電話。 NoPhone is a $12 piece of plastic that looks like a smartphone but actually does nothing. “Most people don't think about phone addiction as a real thing until you're like, ‘O.K., they're buying a piece of plastic because they are worried about their friend,' ” said Van Gould, head of the nascent venture that had sold close to 3,200 NoPhones. NoPhone是塊12美元的塑膠，看來像支智慧手機，實際上啥也不能做。這家新興公司已售出近3200支NoPhone，老闆范恩．古德說：「多數人沒把手機成癮真當個問題，直到你覺得『是的，他們買了一件塑膠，因為他們擔心朋友。』」 Adam Gazzaley, a neurologist and neuroscience professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said, “You have a population that is starting to say, ‘Wait, we love all this technology but there seems to be a cost – whether it's my relationship or my work or my safety because I'm driving and texting.' ” 舊金山加州大學神經病學家暨神經科學教授亞當．加札利說：「有一群人開始說『等等，我們愛這些科技，但似乎要付代價－無論是我的感情、工作或安全，因為我邊開車邊打簡訊。」 Some products are trying to find a balance. Google Now uses data to bother you only when you need it. “If I'm about to forget my kid's birthday I want the phone to scream at me until I do something about it,” said Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of products. 有些產品試著尋求平衡。Google Now只在你需要時用數據打擾你。Google產品資深副總裁桑達．皮柴說：「在我將要忘記孩子的生日時，我要手機對我尖叫，直到我讓它停止。」 Smartphones are a potent delivery mechanism for two fundamental human impulses, according to Paul Atchley, a psychology professor at the University of Kansas: our quest to find new and interesting distractions, and our desire to feel that we have checked off a task. 堪薩斯大學心理學教授保羅．艾區利表示，對於兩項基本的人類衝動而言，智慧手機是有力的傳遞機制：尋求新鮮有趣的娛樂，以及感覺自己檢查過一項工作的欲望。 “The brain gets literally rewired to switch – to constantly seek out novelty, which makes putting the phone down difficult,” he said. 他說：「大腦實際上會重新連接以轉變，持續尋求新奇事物，這使得放下手機很困難。」 Addiction or not, Ms. Butler still sought help from Ringly. 無論成癮與否，巴特勒仍持續自Ringly尋求幫助。 Mr. Atchley is skeptical. Successful treatment, he said, is about controlling our demons – not outsourcing them. 艾區利表示懷疑。他說，成功的治療在於控制自己的心魔－而非將此事外包。 In technology, as in life, a little willpower goes a long way. 面對科技，一如面對生活，一點點意志力就很有用。 Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/282793/web/#2L-6186766L Powered by Firstory Hosting

The Fort Hays State University Neuromuscular Wellness Center has a new person in charge. Luke Kriley stops by to tell us about himself and a little bit about the Center on this episode of the Post Podcast. Transcript: EDITORS NOTE: Transcripts are provided by an automated service and are not verified for accuracy.   James Bell  at the Fort Hays State University neuro muscular Wellness Center has a new person in charge Luke Kriley stops by to tell us about himself and a little bit about the Center on this episode of the Post Podcast.     my new assistant professor Fort Hays State University within the HHB with his health and human performance. I'm a physical therapist by trade, I switched over to academia just this year. But I wanted to talk about some of the service based programs we have on campus, what we're in charge of is the neuromuscular Wellness Center. So essentially, what that is, is just think of it like a gym or miniature PT clinic, it's there to provide an accessible resource for community members who have neuromuscular diseases, if they want to work on physical fitness, functional mobility, quality of life, or just to stay active will serve those populations. A lot of the times when you have a specific disease that's kind of chronic in nature, and does not improve over time, just based on how the disease progresses, pathology wise, you know, you can only do so much physical therapy for someone's gonna have to pay for it, not just insurance. So if you get to a point where you meet your cap, you need to look for a place we're a good place to do that. What's nice is we're staffed by two full time faculty myself and then Macy Klaus, we both bring clinical experience, she's is experienced in cardiac rehabilitation and pulmonary rehab, I come a physical therapy background. And then we also have a lot of students, I get involved with the program as well.   James Bell  Love that, you know, I had the opportunity over the years to do some stories with physical therapists. And it's such an interesting kind of field. It's, it's, I think most people think of it as just an extension of like a massage or a yoga class class. But really, it's it's more in depth than that, right?     Yes, yes, absolutely. So, you know, within the world of physical therapy, most people come to physical therapy for pain. But one of the things pain does is it causes dysfunction, whether it's emotionally, physically, however you want. So those are the things we try to address. You know, if you come to us and say, Hey, I can't get swing my tennis racquet anymore, because my elbow hurts. What do I need to do we find a plan, we give you some interventions, some exercise stretches to help you figure that out. But there is massage involved. But there's a lot of other things as well. People just like to massage the best.   James Bell  Imagine that. So you said this is this is open to the community how to get involved? Or how do they take advantage of those services?     Yeah, so they can just get a hold of us anywhere at Fort Hays State University and they get a hold of me, I can give you my email or I don't have a phone number on me from my office. I don't know that quite yet. It just started. So   James Bell  fair enough. You know, and I've been here three years, I can't tell you my office line either sorry. But you're listening. Yeah, I just use my cell phone.     So it is $45 a month, you pay as a membership. And then you can come Monday through Friday, every single day, if you'd like to, we can give you different hours, we try to leave it open up for general hours in the morning. Because it's no longer staffed by full time position. That's faculty running it. The hours have changed a little bit, but we tried to be as flexible as possible.   James Bell  Okay, so is there you mentioned insurances? Is this covered at all by insurance? Are you guys strictly Okay, cash kind of service provider,     this is strictly cash service provider, we do not bill insurance. Now the neat thing is now, you know, say you do want someone to provide you with a little bit more guidance, supervision, because you're a big fall risk, you have these certain things going on, and you want someone maybe more than a personal trainer or a fitness expert, when you being a physical therapist, I can guide you through that stuff, give you the exercises you need, maybe do some hands on strategies. And the nice part is we don't have to bill insurance, so we're not restricted or limited by anything.   James Bell  Okay. And then I wonder if you want to talk a little bit about the role the students play in this? Because I mean, I it's obviously it's on campus, it's probably an academic kind of training exercise for them. But how does that all work together? Yeah, so     we use it a lot for professional development. And a lot of kids are going pre professional programs. So this gives them an experience to be hands on and actually see some people in the clinic with real disease real diagnosis, and then get to work with clinicians like Macy. And I,   James Bell  you know, historically, do the students always kind of have that track where they were seeing those hands on or is that relatively new kind of part of the field? It has     been going on for quite a while, I think they've had this for five or six years, somewhere along those lines, I'm not 100% Sure. But with myself being in the clinic, now we have a more clinical approach, I believe, we can start doing some more stuff to get them a little bit more specific into different tracks professionally that you want to take.   James Bell  Okay, you know, I'm just curious, what does a training track look like? Is that a standard four year program? Or is it kind of like a doctor program where they have the post secondary, and they have to do specialized training and all that to get certified or or     sure what I'm talking about physical therapy. So if you go pre professional PT at Fort Hays, you're gonna get your four year bachelor's degree, you'll have some specific prereqs you have to take and then after that, you'll go to a post professional or postgraduate school, which is going to be three years and you'll end up with a doctorate of physical therapy. So it's four years of bachelors, you apply to whatever program going to get into and then it's three years of additional graduate work.   James Bell  Okay, so yeah, that's like a doctor, as long as the training and lots of education I love that because that's who you know. You think talk about these things. And it seems like Google Now, everything is accessible, you can look it up, you can learn, you know, learn those exercises, but having that specialized training and having that people direct to you, probably when you're talking about physio, specialty, physical health, is a much better way to go. And having to have that training probably is invaluable to the, in the in the field,     right? Absolutely. And the nice part is they learn to work with patients and console them. So, you know, in the medical field, No, you go to see the doctor, you're gonna see the doctor for four and a half, five minutes, when you come see a physical therapist or with a clinician, you're gonna see them for 45 minutes to an hour. So there's a lot of personal one on one relationships, they start to figure out how to talk to different generations, you know, there's many years difference between most people they're going to work with, so trying to learn how to communicate, relate to them, not be offensive, and kind of find things they're interested in is a really nice aspect. They, they learned to develop their soft skills very well.   James Bell  Yeah. And you know, we're hearing more and more about that how important those are in almost every academic pursuit, but especially out in the workforce, having those abilities in those skills kind of translates to everything we do. Absolutely, you know, with this program as well, I wonder if you want to talk a little bit about some of the well, I don't know what what the right word would be. But some of the maybe the specifics, like what does the physical therapy look like? Or is it just so different for everybody that it doesn't take any sort of standard track?     Yeah. So you know, in general, we're going to be working on making sure people aren't high fall risk. So if you come in and say you have difficulty walking, we call that gait training. You know, if you're in a wheelchair, and you want to be able to get up and transfer move around a little bit, those are things we can work on. A lot of it is technique based, making sure you do it safely and appropriately and efficiently based on whatever you have going on. You know, the students like to work on the gait training, because it's interesting for them to see how different people walk to learn those different techniques. And the whole goal is to keep you more independent. So you're not having to go live in a nursing home or do something along those lines. We I mean, it's different for everyone, a lot of it's gonna involve the gait training, cardiovascular training, strength training, there's different balance technique techniques. We don't do a lot of hands on manual there. That's kind of not the point. But no, if that needs to be done, we can do a little bit of that too.   James Bell  Okay. Well, we get just about we've gotten under a minute left. I wonder if you want to share any last thoughts or anything else before we go?   No, I just say if you're interested, please try to get a hold of us. You know, I did not bring my contact information. So I'll get that to you, James. But you know, anyone that's really thinking about, Hey, I just want to get active, get involved, but I've got certain things going on where I really want to be supervised. We'd be a great place a great fit for you

Anand Agarawala is the CEO and Cofounder of Spatial and Peter Ng is VP of Design. Spatial is a metaverse platform that allows you to host virtual galleries and events in beautiful artist-built spaces. In VR, mobile, and web.  This is Peter's second time on the podcast, we had him on last year when Spatial pivoted into NFTs last year.Anand and Peter first met and worked together on the Android Team at Google in 2011. When Google acquired Anand's first company, Bumptop, and incorporated Bumptop's touch screen user experience into the Android phone. Peter led Google's evolution into becoming a design-first company by creating Material Design, prototyping Google Hangouts, Google Now, and Google Keep.In this episode, we discuss: Anand's first company Bumptop and its acquisition to Google's Android teamPeter's work at Google  redesigning  Google with Material Design Peter's prototyping process with Google Hangouts, Google Now, and UberSpatial's storyHow Peter created InstaspatialIf you liked this episode, you can find more episodes at wld.show!

EP293 - E-commerce leadership changes and news Episode 293 previews Amazon no good, dirty, rotten, Q2. Including why Amazon's much hailed SCOT software may have led them astray (not a surprise given the name). We also discuss the recent leadership changes at Amazon, Google, Pinterest, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Episode 293 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday June 30, 2022. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 293 being recorded on Thursday June 30th 2022 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason this is a start-up land it's like a triple witching we have the end of the month the end of the quarter and the end of the first half so too it's a big day to be making sure you're hitting your opening so that's what I've been doing today how is your summer been. Jason: [0:59] Less XLE than yours it sounds like. Scot: [1:02] Oh I've seen you in that department of Commerce data comes out so. Jason: [1:13] I don't know maybe I feel like we should move it to like python or are something more more hip for the geeky kids. But I am I'm having a great summer there's been plenty of New Avengers and Star Wars content on in it's fun to see some people in person there have been a few more in person events, I'm a little stressed tonight though there's a big day for listeners is being recorded on on June 30th, and Twitter is sun setting my Twitter clients that I use numerous times a day tonight so it's, it's possible that a lot of people that are used to getting spammed all day by me on Twitter are going to go into withdrawal tomorrow. Scot: [1:56] No you're gonna have to use the app like the rest of us mere citizens. Jason: [2:01] Yeah yeah the neophytes I have to jump in with the unwashed masses and the vanilla Twitter client or some other third-party client if any listeners have a personal favorite I'm open to suggestions. Scot: [2:15] Yeah they're not a lot of good ones whatever you do don't sign up for that paid service because it just makes your tweets take 10 times longer to go out it's like the opposite of a feature. Jason: [2:25] Yeah doesn't sound that appealing. Scot: [2:27] It's supposed to keep you from drunk Tweeting or something but then like you just kind of forget that they're all cued up out there waiting. Jason: [2:34] My best Tweets are the advised ones. Scot: [2:37] Yeah yeah your best ones are grumpy grumpy old Jason once where you're like all right digital on the get the most interaction. Cool well we wouldn't be a Jason and Scot show without some Amazon news. Jason: [3:00] News new your margin is there opportunity. Scot: [3:07] Yeah there's a lot going on at Amazon one of the. If you kind of remember back in our queue to 2022 recap from their earnings they talked a lot about how they had over built their capacity for warehouses so that's the first time they've done that since, oh I don't know 1995 and that was just like a line in an earnings call well now we're starting to see that they're closing warehouses there's been reports of them closing between five and ten warehouses I've heard they're closing delivery stations and figuring all that out one of the funny topics is a lot of folks started contacting me and realize said things like hey did you know your mention and this Amazon article is like what, what turns out they have this technology they've developed called the supply chain optimization Technologies, abbreviated sco T which happens to be my name. Jason: [4:04] And for newest nur's that's actually the correct way to spell Scott is it not. Scot: [4:08] It is yeah it was the 60s and my dad thought it would be fun to have a unique name and it's he was right it's made me infinitely google-able so I have a lot of very easy to find on the Google. I'm very envious of my friend Michael Jones who is impossible to find on Google so so no anonymity for me, but anyway you know what's interesting is and I want to read this little excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article a thousand or something, you and I both know at Amazon because they have this engineering culture they try to take people out of most decision-making process sometimes they call it hands off the wheel so they have all these AI like one time we had a guest on that told us how you know frequently a vendor will be negotiating with an Amazon buyer through a chat and it's a bot on the other side of the the chat not a human. So they have this technology called Scott and what it does is it makes three different projections for basically the orders for looking out into the future it does a high medium and low and during the pandemic. [5:12] The high wasn't high enough so they were kind of taking the high and adding some percentage to it and building out the Fulfillment infrastructure and everything based on what this a I did well because the a I had never seen a pandemic and it obviously it couldn't keep up with the upside of the pandemics demand curve it didn't see the downside of the demand curve coming either, and then I think the humans you know when you when you have your, pilot like six to eight quarters into adding 10% to what this thing does and nailing it. You know they also didn't anticipate this in the bottom fell out and that's one of the reasons why you know they just kind of too, kept taking the Scott forecast adding 10 to 20% and then suddenly they found themselves kind of with their skis out over a cliff. This is really interesting that kind of in a way that the an AI gone wrong kind of caused some of the problems here so I thought that was kind of funny. Jason: [6:09] Yeah I mean like the synopsis here is that Scott is the biggest money sink in Amazon. Scot: [6:18] It's true yep I like to think because they listened to the podcast they named it in honor of me and somewhere in there is a robot named Jason I'm sure. Jason: [6:26] Because you are their Nemesis yeah. Scot: [6:28] Yeah retailgeek it's hard to do an acronym for retailgeek but I'm sure someone there is is working on. Also you know as listeners know there's a new CEO and the jassy and there have been a lot of high-profile departures and it's not clear if he's cleaning house or. Um you know these these issues stocks down a lot of the compensation that Amazon is from stock-based compensation and then, you know someone has to be accountable for these problems so they had there was kind of this domino effect so there was right one Jesse took over there was two other people that were are parents Bell and Wilkie and they left, and then just recently this year a 23 year old veteran Named Dave Clark left and he ran the whole consumer business. Interestingly he went to a company that's been in the news a lot called Flex Port their CEO has been on CNBC and the all in podcast talking about how to fix the supply chain problems. So that's that's interesting that he was able to see your Flex Port was able to lure away a 23 year old Amazon bet. So there was some Sour Apples on the way out Dave Clark told someone that Jesse's just a, terrible micromanager and yeah he'd been there 23 years and shouldn't have to be micromanage and that kind of thing. [7:51] And then they announced that this the guy that ran North America consumer who previously had reported to Dave Clark his name is Doug Harrington he was moving up into that role, what caused a further chain reaction for those people that didn't get the Dave Clark opening one of those was Alicia bowler Davis she was SVP of global consumer, and she went to this online pharmacy called Alto Pharmacy and then Dave Bozeman he went to he was the VP of Amazon transportation services kind of the middle mile so she was if I understand she was Last Mile and he was middle mile, so they both left so that's interesting that the Fulfillment center they've been building out and to the key Executives for the last five years or so left those not clear if that was because of this build out and someone had to be accountable or if they got picked away or what's going on there, so a lot of changes in Amazon at the upper echelons and yeah some chaos here as they re adjust for the new post covid normal. Jason: [8:54] Yeah and I mean almost feels like there's a little bit of a perfect storm of reasons for that senior leadership to start to turn right which historically they have had very little turn by the way right through most of their history but you know the the founder departs as you point out there's a ton of the overwhelming majority of compensation is, stock equity and is that becomes less valuable like those jobs are. Are less sticky you know and there's just the rates of growth at Amazon are are naturally slowing down and it's, you know for a lot of people that you know are used to being the Rockstar that's you know constantly doubling your business and growing really fast it's not as much fun to. To manage their downturns and you know at best slower rates of growth. Scot: [9:45] Yeah and then you notice some changes coming in the grocery side. Jason: [9:50] Yeah so grocery ends up being kind of a really interesting part of this whole Amazon churn so the first thing to know is the new head of consumer that did win Doug Harrington, had previously started Amazon Fresh at Amazon so so, he is a grocery guy and his pre Amazon experience is with webvan which is sort of the original digital grocer. So he is a pure digital grocery guy obviously he's had brought more recently he's had broader roles it. It Amazon. Then then just grocery but you know one would assume that Amazon Fresh is near and dear to his heart that's the only brick-and-mortar concept that still. Sort of in play and growing at an Amazon so that's kind of interesting and historically there's been kind of a tension between Amazon Fresh which is. The grocery business Amazon built organically and Whole Foods, the grocery business that Amazon bought right and there have been times when they seemed like they were smashing them together and then there are times when they're pulling them apart and at the moment they're opening a chain of Amazon Fresh doors that compete with Whole Food. [11:02] You would assume Whole Foods is kind of upmarket expensive grocery and Amazon Fresh is meant to be well Market but like when it washed Amazon Fresh was a little more mid-priced, then we expected and Whole Foods is kind of moving down price a little bit more than you might expect so it's all, it's all been interesting they fight a lot over over Revenue recognition for online grocery orders and it's I would argue it's a confusing customer experience right now because you can order a. Assortment of items with different prices and different service levels from Amazon Fresh and from Whole Foods. So it'll be interesting does Amazon fresh wind because that's Doug Harrington's baby or you know does he at least. [11:44] Put more more stock in solving that problem you know I would argue digital grocery is the biggest white space in the kind of digital retail thing and so it. It's not bad for Amazon that they have a senior leader that understands that space so it's that's going to be interesting, and then on the whole food side the you know the founder of Whole Foods has remained in places the CEO which is kind of surprising given that when was the acquisition 2017. [12:12] Five years ago so five years sounds like a suspicious number for an urn out but. The you know he stuck he was the founder he stuck with a company for a long time like culturally he's, kind of different than Amazonian so when one might not have expected him to last that long but now there's a new CEO which is a long time Lieutenant of his Jason Bushnell boo shell rather and, whether this is the first initiative from Jason or it's a coincidence like Whole Foods has kind of announced that they are pivoting their pricing strategy in really focusing on, improving their value prop and reducing their prices and obviously there's a lot of Economic headwinds and there's kind of a. You know a big big segment of consumers that are concerned about the economy so superficial you go oh yeah it's obvious. That Whole Foods would want to get cheaper but I would actually argue. That we've really seen and shout-out to our friend Steven Dennis we've really seen like this very overt bifurcation of the consumer and there's a bunch of consumers that like do not appear to be changing their shopping Behavior based on inflation and, economic concerns and then there's a bunch of value-oriented consumers that are very overtly changing their shopping behaviors and you would. [13:33] You know a lot of luxury brands are actually raising their prices right now and doing quite well and so you'd almost expect to see Whole Foods lean into that affluent consumer, and Amazon Fresh you know try to try to Target that that value went into consumer but it appears they both have decided to go after value. Scot: [13:51] Yeah it's super confusing as a consumer to figure out and sometimes what I want I want for things and it'll split the cart between the Whole Foods in the prime and like then then it's a hot mess at that point. Jason: [14:04] Yeah I can't get my weekly shop from either one like I like some of the items and my weekly shop are not available from Whole Foods and some are not available from Amazon Fresh it's annoying. Scot: [14:14] Yeah. Jason: [14:14] To add further customer confusion so Amazon Fresh is Amazon's grocery store concept what you might have thought that there'd be a bunch of benefits to being a Prime member and shopping in Amazon Fresh. But you'd be wrong until recently like there were no special Prime benefits for Amazon Fresh Shoppers and so they just launched last week a new program which is kind of a. It's I would almost call it like a traditional retail grocery Affinity program you basically get 20% off on a lot of. On an undisclosed random list of thousands of items where they call everyday essentials if you're a Prime member shopping at Amazon Fresh So this is you know I mentioned that Amazon Fresh didn't come out. Quite as good a value as I was expecting well this is the big move to maybe make them you know compete more directly with with Aldi and. Scot: [15:08] Caught another thing I wanted to pick your brain on is a couple folks have tagged us on social media because they have seen the prime pay badging and new payment mechanism out in the wild have you had a chance to play with that. Jason: [15:22] I have and I confess I'm I'm a little more perplexed than I was when it first launched so maybe like the 30-second recap, um you know Amazon announced this new beta pilot called Prime pay and it's essentially letting third-party sellers that are not selling on Amazon. [15:46] Accept Amazon pay and. Offer Prime benefits and have your orders fulfilled from fulfillment by Amazon. [15:59] Like if their Prime members right so if your Shopify Merchant in you're selling cat litter, you know you can have a bad you know and someone's a Prime member and they're on your Shopify site you can say hey check out with your Amazon pay and and you know get your goods in one day or even same day, if our cat litter is in the Amazon Fulfillment Network and that's that was when they announced this beta and they didn't provide a lot of the details. You know my first reaction was that's a shot directly across the bow of Shopify. Who had been making a lot of traction with shop pay and was making a lot of noise if not traction with their fulfillment systems and now you know Amazon swooped in and said hey don't screw around with these, you know barely scaled fulfillment things just put all your goods in the Amazon's fulfillment and when you sell it from Shopify will ship the order or when you sell it on Amazon will ship the order, and will give you access to the. The biggest bet best digital wallet in the US market which is Amazon pay right and I thought that was super interesting and I was frankly really curious. If Shopify was even going to allow its Merchants to use it which. It would have been way off brand for Shopify to not allow that but you have to imagine they didn't want to vote. Scot: [17:18] Yeah. Jason: [17:20] And so now fast forward a few months and we've seen the first betas in the live in in, live in the world and they are all Shopify Merchants so first question answered at least for now Shopify is allowing its merchants, to use prime pay but there's a huge Nuance in Prime pay that I kind of missed when the beta was first announced but now it's glaring at me, um Prime pay will only fulfill your goods if you're already a Prime member. So when they first saw this I thought oh my gosh they just captured the whole 3pl market and no other 3pl is going to have any room because you're not going to be able to compete with the service level of Amazon and the convenience of the aggregated inventory and then the bonus of. Of the Amazon digital wallet on top of all that that it was just going to be too compelling a value prop and so everybody every small seller in the world is just going to rely on Amazon for all those Services game over. But. There's about 100 million Prime members and there's about 240 million households in the US so there's still an awful lot of households that do not have Prime. And if you're a Shopify Merchant and you want to sell something to any of those households that don't have Prime. You can offer Prime pay for the Prime members but you have to have an alternative 3pl to fulfill for the non Prime members. So they really haven't put any of the other 3pls out of business at all they've just stolen some of their volume. Scot: [18:49] Yeah yeah Anderson more more complexity. Jason: [18:53] Yeah yeah so it's going to be interesting to see how it all plays out, but it yeah shout out to our friend Joe a Marketplace poles they always have great content and, he was the first one in the made me aware of some of these betas in the wild and he found the cat lady's.com and I'm not going to ask how he he. Scot: [19:14] Put me there. Jason: [19:17] But Joe I'm a fan and props to you. Scot: [19:21] Your fan of Joe or the cat ladies are both. Jason: [19:23] Now both originally Joe but now I my my love has expanded to the cat ladies. Scot: [19:29] Do they really sell kitty litter. Jason: [19:31] I believe they do or at least like artificial grass. Scot: [19:35] Yeah that's definitely in the crap category hey hey I'll be here all night, another thing that Amazon announced that I know you're excited for because you're actually moving so this is a great time to buy some cabling and some new mesh network key things they announced Prime Day this year it's going to be July 12th and 13th and then they promptly have started pushing the deals out like right now like just today and yesterday I've been getting flooded with emails that say, they have a new brand for it and they call it early Amazon Prime Day deal exclusives so it feels feels a little desperate to be honest with you that you know they set up this big shopping holiday and now they're kind of, pushing the deals out with a before then I don't know if they're trying to juice Q2 or if there. One school of thought is if we're going into this recessionary period the more dollars you can grab out of that shrinking wallet due to inflation as well, get them sooner versus later so maybe they had set this up before things the macro deteriorated now they're kind of like wow I wish we could set this earlier let's go ahead and get some deals out I may be reading too much into that but I don't ever remember them kind of they've always had you know. Black Black Friday and January or early October kind of things holiday deals in early but I've never seen them, push Prime day as hard and early as they are now. Jason: [21:00] Yeah I mean they always have had some pre-primed a deals like it's not completely unheard of but I agree with you the volume seem significantly higher and it's funny that we still call it Prime day right because for a long time is over it went from like Prime day to Prime 18 hours to Prime two days and now it's starting to feel like Prime month. Um which is interesting I don't know this comes into play, there are some consumer surveys out there that show less interest in Prime day than years past right and you're comping against a tough Prime day in a very different economic environment and so like it's possible that there's some concern like Amazon's rate of growth has slowed and everything else it's possible possible that there's some concern, that. That you know Prime day won't have the it's for sure going to have a spike but that it won't have the same spike it has in years past, um and you know so they're they're trying to you know find ways to Goose it more I you know. I don't know I do think one of the interesting Dynamics there's kind of like two opposite forces that happen on Prime day like secretly. The stuff that sells best on Prime day are Amazon. [22:20] But the penetration on those Amazon products you know continues to be higher so that that like. The what the law of large numbers just means like. You know not you can't sell a smart speaker to as many people as you used to be able to do because everyone has a heck of a lot of smart speakers right and they're they're frankly getting so cheap that it's not as big a win when they do sell one. And so then the other half is this long tail in there like one of the problems there so many sellers on Amazon there so many Lightning Deals that like the signal-to-noise ratio in the, the awareness of some particular good deal and the scarcity of a deal like all of those things that you would normally do that a normal you know brick and mortar retailer with you know constrain inventory, would do for a sale like they just don't work as well. For this Marketplace model and so I do think it's tricky to keep the hype and you know we've seen you know Prime day was modeled after singles day we've definitely seen singles day lose some momentum still a big deal but rate of growth slowing significantly and reasonably that will see that at Prime Day to all that being said the way to think about prime day is it's it's two days of sales in one day which is kind of a big deal. Scot: [23:38] Yeah and then I thought this was interesting that Amazon announced that they're going to use some of that data that we've been collecting in their stores that don't have a check out the just walk out technology and they're going to be selling some of that data to Brands so they can basically say to our brand hey 800 consumers walked by your product three picked it up and put it back on the shelf and you know of those three they read the ingredients and then they put it back on the shelf and and then presumably there are some action ability to that data what what do you think about that. Jason: [24:16] Yeah so I think it's really interesting you know way before there was just walk out technology like we were starting to get some some very early technology to give us some insight about how consumers behaved in stores right so you were starting to get some like, smarter people measuring things that could do heat mapping and and you know we were getting these I could GI tracking technologies that we'd put on on a small subset of customers to kind of understand how they browse through a store, because you know frankly for the last 100 years of Shopper marketing we mostly have been based on these like urban legends about how Shopper shop, and not having a lot of data and then e-commerce comes along and suddenly you've got super granular data about how people pick products and what they glanced at and didn't buy and what they added to their card and then check out and what they you know added to their card and then took out of their car like all of this pre buying behavior that we get in e-commerce, we've never really had in the store and you know the Technologies and the methodologies these match Panel test all these different studies we used to do we're really sort of Kluge, and so a lot of us have said hey one of the secret benefits of just walk out technology is that by accident, it collects all of this really valuable consumer data about how people behave, before they get to the cash register or before they consummate their purchase since they're I guess there is no cash. [25:41] Um and you know we've talked about that being a useful Advantage for Amazon and that they're probably using it too, um sort of inform how they design these new store Concepts, and so now like so many other things than Amazon does they take this this. [25:59] Like you know competitive advantage that they have and they turned it into a product and sell it to other people so now they're selling those. Those Shopper insights to cpgs and you know you're a cpg trying to figure out how people decide to pick your cat litter versus someone else's cat litter on the cat litter shelf in a retail store. Um [26:21] Kroger won't tell you a lot about how they make that decision because Kroger doesn't know but now you can get real data from Amazon about how they make that decision and Amazon and you can probably assume that there's a similar path to purchase at Kroger so, suddenly like Amazon becomes the market research firm for all of the Shopper marketing so I do think that's super interesting, um they're not alone Walmart actually has a store that's heavily instrumented like this that they watch first that's called them, the intelligent retail lab store that you know it's kind of a it doesn't have just walk out technology but it has thousands of cameras and sensors and they sell data from that store through their data licensing arm which is called illuminate if I'm remembering right. And then you know Amazon launched a new product. [27:09] Nine days ago on the 21st that I'm really excited about this called Amazon marketing stream and Amazon marketing stream is, a much higher volume more granular api-based, access to all of the marketplace shopping data so that's you know data on traditional Amazon shopping that like, previously was locked up or you could only get for your own brand or you could you know you can only get in Amazon premium services. Now it gets plugged into pack view in all of these of these digital media tools you get all this real-time visibility to have people are making purchase decisions and then at the same time. They're rolling out this that same kind of data for how people are making purchase decisions in a brick-and-mortar store, super long answer but I think this is kind of a big deal and I do think this is the future is kind of replacing, like urban legends and opinions about how consumers behave with actual data about how they really are. Scot: [28:11] You do you think this stuff is kind of stand-alone or they're going to build this is going to be kind of feeding into this ad Network because they seem to be really putting a lot of effort into Excel. Jason: [28:20] Yeah I do so I think there's only so much so many brands that are so I'll tell you who's not in a position to buy that data is all the digital native startups that then cut a deal to get you know distribution through. Right against the big cpg brands that can afford like have budgets to buy that data and then you know they have so much like institutional. Impediments that then you know they all talk about how much wonder they are with that data but it's really hard for them to act on that data and do anything different than they historically have. And so I think the best way to make that data actionable is you know to filter that data into. New audiences and new ad formats for retail media networks right so like I think there's a natural. Fit between those. Those two products so I'm sure we'll see more Integrations in that but I do think for really smart marketers and in particular the folks that are involved in customer experience design, the the raw data is is super useful and and you know gives gives Brands a competitive advantage that are able to get it and take action on. Scot: [29:30] Cool did you so that's where we are on Amazon any non Amazon news. Jason: [29:39] Yeah just a couple of things to keep our show in its it's tidy timebox format we talked a lot about executive changes so in my mind there are two other huge executive changes, in our industry this week. There's a guy that we've talked about on the show several times Bill ready who's the in X PayPal guy in X PayPal mafia guy. That red Commerce for the last couple of years at Google and he just announced that he's leaving Google to become the new CEO at Pinterest so the, the founder is stepping out of the CEO role at Pinterest and they're bringing over Bill ready, and to be honest that has the pundants whipped up into a lather because everyone's like oh man Bill ready is a Commerce guy he was PayPal he was head of Commerce a Google Now the fact that the Pinterest is bringing a you know a dedicated Commerce guy in the lead the company, it's the most overt sign yet that you know Pinterest thinks it's future is Commerce. Scot: [30:39] Yeah which I think it's driven by the IDF a stuff don't you. Jason: [30:44] Yeah yeah again harder to make a living on ads when you can't show the efficacy of the ads quite as well and you can't Target the ads quite as well and so it becomes much more appealing to say, you know let's monetize our Audience by selling stuff to our audience directly and also that you know gives you that first party data that then you know keeps you, well immersed in the in the advertising business so I think for any of these. Free hydrographic social media sites it's a, it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis to explore to say hey we got to figure out how to play really well at Commerce and make Commerce part of our core offering and certainly you know Pinterest is doing that they've talk forever about how, how much higher buying intent that their users have then other other social networks Tick-Tock is leaning heavily into it snap is leaning heavily into it it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, the one unfortunate truth is nobody's been particularly successful at it yet and. Have they not been successful because they just haven't gotten the execution right or is it because the consumer doesn't really want that like I honestly think that's an open question I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that Commerce can save all these social media networks I mean it's worth trying, but I think the jury's going to be out and I will say the. [32:10] The sort of part of this the bill ready transition that's not talked about that I'm frankly more interested in is to me one of the companies that. His best position to win a Commerce and is underperforming at Commerce the most is the company Bill ready as weaving its Google and you know, bluntly like I don't think Google has made a ton of Commerce progress over the over the last two years that bill ready has been there it's going to be interesting like will Google replace him will they replace him with a, Google Insider will they replace them with another Commerce person will that person have some new ideas like you know will they be able to find a way to kind of Marshall some of the inherent assets Google has and be better at Commerce oh my God I'd love to see Google lean into in-store Commerce more and help solve search and you know all of these retail media Network opportunities for brick-and-mortar retailers like I feel like there's a lot of untapped. Opportunity there that I've been surprised to see Google not succeed at and so it'll be like is this a new chance for Google to start anew. Scot: [33:20] Yeah and then you know it's also interesting so if your Pinterest board and you're like we need an e-commerce Guru the PayPal Mafia thing is good but that was quite a while ago and Google hasn't. Done a ton so I would be hiring somebody to Amazon expects you know it'll be interesting to see what if. Because there's so many floating around what if some of them one of them ended up at Google that would be dug be kind of really interesting to see if Amazon has own Minion. Jason: [33:49] Especially when yeah if Flex Port can get a super senior SS team member. Scot: [33:53] Yeah why can't Google yeah it's kind of weird right, yeah and then you know to watch someone that maybe had a chip on their shoulder that said hey I didn't get a promotion I'm gonna I'm going to you know use all these assets that Google has and bring them to bear I think the reason why is when these people interview at these bigger companies be at a meta a Google or whatnot. You know there's not a board sea level and board level focus on it you know 21 if you're a Google. The sacred cow is the add thing and if you if you say something like you know what I want to divert 20% of traffic to this new thing then you know if you're not going to do that so so startups from probably more attractive because they have more flexibility and they're not stuck kind of in that innovators dilemma like some of the other systems are. Jason: [34:50] Yeah think about that that'll be my deep thought for today yeah so I think that one is super interesting I'm gonna continue to follow that closely one side note like Pinterest has previously hired a bunch of other, I'll call them like Commerce stars and like one that stands out to me is. The chief technology officer from Walmart I moved to Pinterest Jeremy King and so I mean there's you know this is not the first. White indication that Commerce is an important Initiative for Pinterest so we'll we'll see how Bill does there I hope he does well so one other transition that I'm getting a lot of calls about these last couple days, is Bed Bath & Beyond just had their quarterly their Q2 earnings report and it was atrocious, so their same-store sales were down like 24 or 25 percent their e-commerce was down like 23%, um and you know folks may remember like a year or two ago they forced out the. [35:52] One of the founders is CEO and they brought in a turnaround CEO this guy Mark Triton and I talked a lot about Mark Triton he was like very credibly one of the architects of targets exclusive, brand strategies and so he was, the chief Merchant that helped launched a bunch of products at Target that were wildly successful and he left Target to become the CEO of this struggling retailer, Bed Bath & Beyond shortly after they hired Mark Triton they got a new activists board member Ryan Cohen who bought a big chunk of. Bed Bath & Beyond Ryan was one of the founders of chewy and made a bunch of his money there he was like a principal shareholder and on the board at GameStop during all the, the craziness with Robin Hood and GameStop and Bone all that stuff and so, like Ryan kind of inherited Mark as his turnaround CEO and simultaneous with these like very disappointing Q2 earnings, they announced that Mark would be leaving and they appointed an interim CEO who's a Sugo of who's a, already a board member at Bed Bath and Beyond and former CEO from like Goff Smith and several other retailers. So [37:20] What I have found interesting about all this it's a really difficult situation but Bethenny on Xena in a tough situation. [37:29] And they certainly aren't performing very well and they have a lot of cooks there at the moment with with conflicting ideas about where to go but I have seen a lot of pundits kind of. Like dancing on Mark Triton's grave and talking about what a horrible higher this was and how stupid it was for Bed Bath and Beyond Beyond to go after this this. Exclusive brand strategy that Mark was trying to execute and how like oh obviously this was doomed from the beginning and anyone could have seen this wasn't going to work. Um and kind of writing him off and personally I feel like that's a little unfair like II. Mark certainly turned out not to be the right CEO for the circumstances the Bed Bath & Beyond was in but I actually think that that, you know Bed Bath & Beyond needs to invent a reason for people to go there and spoiler it's not the 20% off coupon anymore, um it's not the treasure hunt anymore, like you're not going to win on assortment as a big box like against Amazon right and so one of the smart ways to win against Amazon is to sell stuff that people want that Amazon doesn't have and if you can invent desirable products, that's a smart strategy and every big retailer in America is trying to execute that strategy and Mark like frankly has been better than most of executing that strategy I think. [38:52] That strategy kind of sucks when you're hemorrhaging your customer base people don't have a reason to come to your store and then you, execute the first wave of your private label products and they all get trapped on a boat off the coast of Long Beach and never make it to the store right and so I don't know of in a different era if Mark strategy would have worked. Ed Bed Bath & Beyond I don't think it was an unsound strategy you know it just right you probably needed a CEO who's a lot more focused on being good at supply chain and cost-cutting and was willing to make some hard decisions about. Curating the store assortment and stuff like that to kind of cut costs. Before you got around to launching these products and you know horrific timing that you tried to launch all these products like you do as a. During a huge supply chain disruption so I don't know what do you think you think it was a doom strategy. Scot: [39:47] I don't think the externalities are hard to pick out you know so you go from a supply chain crisis into a inflation. No stagnation spiral this is like a it's a really rough rough rough hand that he was dealt for sure. Jason: [40:04] Yeah yeah so I don't know I do think they're a bunch of other retailers that really aspire to launch more products so I have a feeling that you'll see Mark glance I'm somewhere pretty soon because I think he has a skill set that. That will be in demand and then it does not appear they're calling Sue an interim CEO I don't think anyone thinks she's the, the future of Bed Bath & Beyond so I think they're they are out there doing a CEO search it's going to be interesting to see what kind of person, what you know will step up to that challenge right now. Scot: [40:33] While you were talking about it kind of the crazy idea popped in my head you know these these Amazon FBA acquisition vehicles have all seemed to hit the skids pretty hard thrashy oh and what not, yeah there's a there's a path where maybe they buy one of those if you wanted to like parachute in 500 private label Brands to try and restore that, that's one acquisition path that you can take to become interesting I don't know if you know if that makes any sense for the categories or whatnot but that would be an interesting, way to solve that problem with an acquisition. Jason: [41:09] Yeah no I do think there's something there and I think just the. You know I'm not sure you want to hire a traditional product Centric Merchant driven CEO. You know for a traditional product Centric company you know that's kind of losing its way right like you probably need some complementary skills they add something new to the mix and you're right like there's kind of a big remix going on in the world right now there's a bunch of digital Talent from you know the Amazons and Google's of the world this spinning off there's a bunch of digital Talent from all these, kind of startup ecosystems that you know we're we're playing in the Amazon Echo System and now we're less appealing and in the the you don't have to be a roll ups are a perfect example of all those, you know I think a bunch of those guys you know and and women will probably find, their next career opportunities taking what they know and taking it to a different kind of business than kind of just recreating what they've been doing. Scot: [42:10] Totally agree we will see. Jason: [42:12] In e-commerce guy solving Carwash for the world or. Scot: [42:15] Crazy crazy talk you do cat litter I'll do car washes. Jason: [42:20] That sounds like a great plan and that sounds like a great place to leave it because it's happened again we've used up all our allotted time, but as I always have you found the show helpful or it was entertaining to scream at how wrong we were into your podcasting client then you could reward us for that entertainment by jumping on iTunes and leaving us that five star review. Scot: [42:44] Thanks everybody and until next time. Jason: [42:48] Happy commercing.

Fevzi Turkalp, the Gadget Detective, joins Bill Buckley on BBC Radio Berkshire to discuss the latest tech news and reviews. This week; The UK's Intellectual Property Office has decided that Artificial Intelligence won't be able to own copyright on any inventions it creates, ruling the inventor must be listed as a real person, while other countries' patent offices have reached other conclusions, so where does the future lie? First Gadget of the Week is the TomTom Rider Premium Pack. This SatNav solution is designed for motorbikes, is waterproof, and works with gloves of varying thickness gloves and in portrait or landscape mode. Powered by the motorbike this comes with a mounting bracket allowing easy removal. Available in 500 model with UK maps or 550 with European maps, updateable over WiFi, this SatNav allows the user to specify the type of road to use, for example excluding hills, and can warn of blackspots and traffic jams, it even allows hands free calling, can warn of speed cameras, and supports Siri and Google Now. The Premium version comes with a magnetic mount and charger for use in cars, too. Scoring 4 out of 5, ride on in and listen for the full details. Second Gadget of the Week is the Amazfit T-Rex 2 smartwatch. This rugged GPS enabled watch can utilise many of the various GPS variants in use globally. With the ability to measure heartrate, oxygen levels, respiration rate, stress levels, it is waterproof down to 10 metres, with a large OMELED screen, built in barometer, Bluetooth, long-lasting battery and much, much more, this is a watch for those on the go. Scoring 4 out of 5, listen in for more. You can hear the Gadget Detective on BBC Berkshire just after midday and can follow and contact him on Twitter @gadgetdetective. If you enjoy these shows please consider subscribing and leaving a reviews, thanks! #Fevzi #Turkalp #Gadget #Detective #Tech #Technology #News #Reviews #Help #Advice #Bill #Buckley #BBC #Radio #Berkshire #UK #Intellectual #Properties #Property #Office #Invention #Copyright #Person #AI #Artificial #Intelligence #Software #GadgetoftheWeek #TomTom #Rider #Premium #Pack #Motorbike #Motorcycle #GPS #Satnav #Route #Blackspot #Traffic #Hills #Mount #Car #Screen #Gloves #Maps #Portrait #Landscape #Calling #Hands #Free #Amazfit #TRex #2 #Smartwatch #Blood #Oxygen #Heartrate #Pulse #Stress #Exercise #Health #Tracking #OMELED #Glass #Waterproof #Rugged #Outdoor #Barometer

Welcome to Episode #2 of The Loop, the podcast where I unpack practical career advice and insights from experts and coaches. Today's guest is former Google software engineer, Phil Verghese. Phil was a Tech Lead and Manager at Google for 12 years, and most recently, he led the Google Photos Android core team and was part of the team that did the initial launch of Google Photos. Google Photos has over 1 billion monthly active users. Prior to his work on Google Photos, he was on multiple teams including Google Now, Google Mobile Maps, Google's Aerial Imagery team, and the Google Search Appliance. Other interesting roles he's held: startup co-founder, U.S. Army M1A1 Tank Company Commander, and FAA Certified Flight Instructor.In our conversation, we get into detail about the expectations of a software engineer at Google, the different levels of software engineer, the expectations of an engineering manager, what Google is looking for when they hire an engineer, common interview pitfalls, and advice for anyone looking to apply for a role at Google.Nowadays Phil coaches job seekers on nailing the interview and leadership. You can setup a time to chat with Phil here —> https://app.carrus.io/s/phil-verghese-1 Relevant articles:  Interview Insights from an Ex-Software Engineer at Google The Google Interview Process Everything you Need to Crack the Google Coding Interview Highlights and Timestamps:[4:10] The parallel between being an army tank commander and a software engineer, the importance of the 'why'[6:10] What is it like to be a software engineer at Google, common misconceptions, learning how to write software[9:30] How much technical knowledge do you really need to land the job/ why LeetCode isn't enough [11:50] Breakdown of different levels between an L3, L4, L5 engineer, etc.[14:45] Why promotions are meant to be "late" at Google [15:32] What a staff engineer does[16:30] What a senior staff engineer does[20:40] L8 engineers and directors[23:00] How to prepare for senior engineering positions/leadership interviews[26:40] System design, coding interviews, behavioral interviews, and what to expect[29:10] An example of a difficult and less common System Design question from Phil and how to start approaching it[32:14] Why "Premature Optimization is the Root of All Evil"[34:30] How Phil prepares people for Google interviewers and tricky questions you might ask/ traps to watch out for [36:33] Why Leetcode is NOT enough to prepare[37:40] How many answers can you get wrong in a technical interview at Google and still pass? [41:00] Why it's okay to say I don't know[42:30] Phil's #1 interview tip/framing before the interview / getting in the right mindset [46:30] The technical portion of product manager interviews[47:30] Questions Phil asks product managers for interview prep[49:30] Interview questions for Engineering Managers and leadership roles[52:50] How common it is to fail an interview / why google would prefer a false negative over a false positive / applying multiple times[54:30] The amount of time it takes to put in/ does time prepping correlate to success[56:30] Is it harder to get a job at Google now vs. 10 years ago?Questions/Comments/Feedback about this Episode? Drop me an email anytime at misha@carrus.io!

Hypergrowth, Scaling & Org Design w/ Surabhi Gupta #76Discerning what to prioritize is key to success for any organization, and even more critical during hypergrowth. Surabhi Gupta (Head of Engineering @ Robinhood) shares how she identified current and future priorities as their eng org scaled from 300 to 1,000+ engineers. Plus her approach to org design, how to set up new hires for success during hypergrowth, and a framework for predicting future personnel requirements.ABOUT SURABHI GUPTASurabhi Gupta is the VP of Product Engineering at Robinhood, where she oversees the company's growing engineering organization. Prior to Robinhood, Surabhi spent seven years at Airbnb where she was Head of Engineering for Airbnb's Homes business. During her tenure at Airbnb, she led a variety of teams such as Search, Growth, Guest and Host. Before Airbnb, she was a Software Engineer at Google, where she worked on web search ranking, and the Google Now team on predictive search. Surabhi holds a M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford."These are not insurmountable problems. So when you make that case to other leaders, especially outside of engineering, I think it's important that...‘Hey, we're not going for this ideal world of no technical debt. It's just that here's the impact of not focusing on it. The impact of not focusing on this technical debt is that we are going to see outages and there will be this false sense of progress because every time the engineers try to focus on some product work, they're going to have to go on this outage and solve that.'I think the best way to put it really is you are treading water at that point.”- Surabhi Gupta Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elc The ELC Virtual Summit is BACK on April 20th-22nd!We're bringing together engineering leaders from around the world to surface fresh industry insights & help you build peer support. Don't miss out on expert conversations, peer-led roundtables & workshops to help you accelerate your leadership growth.Learn more and register HERE: sfelc.com/summit2022SHOW NOTES:Joining Robinhood in the pandemic (2:23)How new leaders can eliminate bottlenecks (6:59)How to amend decisions previously made by Executive Team Members (8:58)Robinhood's growth from 300 engineers to 1,000 (11:49)The 3 aspects of scaling (12:46)Why process makes people happy (14:45)The effects of scaling on team structure (17:33)How to approach org design (19:23)Why flatter org structures are better for hypergrowth (21:36)How to perform org alignment check-ups (24:37)Forming the executive engineering team (25:55)A framework for predicting future personnel requirements (29:26)How to set up new hires for success during hypergrowth (32:42)Successfully onboarding senior leaders during hypergrowth (34:25)Cultivating a sense of belonging in the present “future of work” (36:03)Finding the right engineering teams for new hires (39:18)Rapid Fire Questions (41:07)Takeaways (45:47)

Android 12L is official as "Android 12.1," rolling out now to Pixel phones. Android 12L: Hands-on with EVERY new feature and function. New Feature Drop update leaves out Pixel 6, improves Live Caption & Live Translate. Geekbench just banned the last four years of Samsung flagships over throttling debacle. Samsung responds to app-throttling discovery, promises to ship an off switch. OSOM talks about its first phone, ahead of a Q4 release. Carl Pei's Nothing is working on a smartphone. Nothing can't stop smartphone leaks. HTC will make a return to 'high-end' Android phones in April, focused on the Metaverse. Google Pixel 6a and Pixel Watch could launch later than expected. Google Pixel 6a and 'Pixel Watch' tipped to come in three colors each, 32GB storage for watch. YouTube Music artist pages now list songs and albums 'From your library,' like Play Music . Google is pulling the plug on Assistant Snapshot, the only trace left of Google Now. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3MAH7jz Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: itpro.tv/allaboutandroid promo code AAA30

Android 12L is official as "Android 12.1," rolling out now to Pixel phones. Android 12L: Hands-on with EVERY new feature and function. New Feature Drop update leaves out Pixel 6, improves Live Caption & Live Translate. Geekbench just banned the last four years of Samsung flagships over throttling debacle. Samsung responds to app-throttling discovery, promises to ship an off switch. OSOM talks about its first phone, ahead of a Q4 release. Carl Pei's Nothing is working on a smartphone. Nothing can't stop smartphone leaks. HTC will make a return to 'high-end' Android phones in April, focused on the Metaverse. Google Pixel 6a and Pixel Watch could launch later than expected. Google Pixel 6a and 'Pixel Watch' tipped to come in three colors each, 32GB storage for watch. YouTube Music artist pages now list songs and albums 'From your library,' like Play Music . Google is pulling the plug on Assistant Snapshot, the only trace left of Google Now. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3MAH7jz Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: itpro.tv/allaboutandroid promo code AAA30

Android 12L is official as "Android 12.1," rolling out now to Pixel phones. Android 12L: Hands-on with EVERY new feature and function. New Feature Drop update leaves out Pixel 6, improves Live Caption & Live Translate. Geekbench just banned the last four years of Samsung flagships over throttling debacle. Samsung responds to app-throttling discovery, promises to ship an off switch. OSOM talks about its first phone, ahead of a Q4 release. Carl Pei's Nothing is working on a smartphone. Nothing can't stop smartphone leaks. HTC will make a return to 'high-end' Android phones in April, focused on the Metaverse. Google Pixel 6a and Pixel Watch could launch later than expected. Google Pixel 6a and 'Pixel Watch' tipped to come in three colors each, 32GB storage for watch. YouTube Music artist pages now list songs and albums 'From your library,' like Play Music . Google is pulling the plug on Assistant Snapshot, the only trace left of Google Now. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3MAH7jz Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: itpro.tv/allaboutandroid promo code AAA30

Android 12L is official as "Android 12.1," rolling out now to Pixel phones. Android 12L: Hands-on with EVERY new feature and function. New Feature Drop update leaves out Pixel 6, improves Live Caption & Live Translate. Geekbench just banned the last four years of Samsung flagships over throttling debacle. Samsung responds to app-throttling discovery, promises to ship an off switch. OSOM talks about its first phone, ahead of a Q4 release. Carl Pei's Nothing is working on a smartphone. Nothing can't stop smartphone leaks. HTC will make a return to 'high-end' Android phones in April, focused on the Metaverse. Google Pixel 6a and Pixel Watch could launch later than expected. Google Pixel 6a and 'Pixel Watch' tipped to come in three colors each, 32GB storage for watch. YouTube Music artist pages now list songs and albums 'From your library,' like Play Music . Google is pulling the plug on Assistant Snapshot, the only trace left of Google Now. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3MAH7jz Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: itpro.tv/allaboutandroid promo code AAA30

The Future You: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help You Get Healthier, Stress Less, and Live Longer by Harry Glorikian "AI is all around us. Self-driving cars. Smart personal assistants-think Siri, Cortana, or Google Now-or Alexa, Amazon's cloud-based voice service that is available on literally hundreds of millions of devices. Voice-to-text. Manufacturing robots. Facial recognition software. Security surveillance. Automated financial investing and social media monitoring. Smart homes that control themselves when their owners are out of town. The list is endless. "All of the above make life easier for us. But in this new book by Moneyball Medicine author/podcaster Harry Glorikian, the spotlight is on how AI can (and will, and in many cases already does) make us healthier." -from the Foreword to The Future You by Dr. Bob Arnot Do you have a smartphone and a wearable device, such as an Apple Watch or a Fitbit? Most likely yes, right? Well, then, as Glorikian tells us, there are already numerous apps available for download that " ... can also continuously monitor temperature, calorie intake, blood glucose, menstruation cycle, respiration rate, stress levels, brain waves, or just about any other aspect of physical and mental health you want." They identify areas where improvement is needed, and tell us how to improve our health in those areas.

Topic: South Korean 'phone maniac' won't give up his LG smartphones South Korean Ryu Hyun-soo describes himself as an ''LG phone maniac'' and says he won't give up his LG smartphones even though the company is getting out of the business. 南韓人柳賢秀形容自己是「LG手機狂人」，還說即使這家公司準備停止手機業務，他也不會棄用。 LG Electronics Inc. said in April it would wind down its smartphone division by the end of July because of a prolonged sales slump. LG電子4月宣布，由於長期銷售委靡，將在7月底前逐步關閉手機部門。 Ryu, 53, who has collected nearly 90 devices over 23 years, said the audio quality made him fall in love with them. At his house in Anyang, Ryu has a room dedicated to the devices and the parts and tools to fix them. 23年來蒐集近90支LG手機的53歲柳男說，音質使他鍾情於此。在他位於安養市的家中，有一個房間專門放LG手機和修理用的相關零件和工具。 He'll use the LG phones "forever" as long as the parts are still being supplied. 只要零件仍持續供應，他將「永遠」使用LG手機。 "A Samsung phone is like a smart friend and an Apple phone is like a girlfriend to me. Then a LG phone is like a friend whom I've shared the ups and downs of life together with. It is sad to see the friend leaving. It is very sad," Ryu said. 柳男說：「對我來說，三星手機就像聰明的朋友，蘋果手機就像女朋友，而LG手機就像與我一起度過人生高低潮的朋友。看著這位朋友離開很難過，真的很難過。」   Next Article   Topic: The ‘Right to Repair' Movement Gains Ground If you buy a product — a car, a smartphone, or even a tractor — and it breaks, should it be easier for you to fix it yourself? 如果你買了一個產品，例如一輛汽車、一部智慧型手機，甚至是一台拖拉機，結果它壞了，是不是應該讓你自己修理起來更容易些呢？ Manufacturers of a wide range of products have made it increasingly difficult over the years to repair things, for instance by limiting availability of parts or by putting prohibitions on who gets to tinker with them. It affects not only game consoles or farm equipment, but cellphones, military gear, refrigerators, automobiles and even hospital ventilators, the lifesaving devices that have proved crucial this year in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. 多年來，許多種產品的製造商都讓維修變得愈來愈困難，比如限制零件的取得，或對何人有權動手維修施加限制。受影響的產品不止於遊戲主機或農用機具，還有手機、軍用設備、冰箱、汽車，甚至包括今年對抗新冠病毒疫情發揮關鍵作用的救生設備—醫院裡的呼吸器。 Now, a movement known as “right to repair” is starting to make progress in pushing for laws that prohibit restrictions like these. 現在，一項名為「維修權」的運動在推動禁止此類限制的立法上，正取得進展。 In August, Democrats introduced a bill in Congress to block manufacturers' limits on medical devices, spurred by the pandemic. In Europe, the European Commission announced plans in March for new right-to-repair rules that would cover phones, tablets and laptops by 2021. 今年8月，美國民主黨因防疫需要而在國會提出一項法案，旨在阻止製造商對醫療裝置設下限制。在歐洲，歐盟執行委員會3月宣布了新的維修權規定計畫，在2021年以前實施，涵蓋手機、平板電腦和筆記型電腦。 And in more than 20 statehouses nationwide, right-to-repair legislation has been introduced in recent years by both Republicans and Democrats. 近年來，在全美國20多個州的議會裡，共和黨和民主黨都提出了維修權法案。 Over the summer, the House advanced a funding bill that includes a requirement that the Federal Trade Commission complete a report on anti-competitive practices in the repair market and present its findings to Congress and the public. 今年夏天，眾議院推動了一項資助法案，其中責成聯邦貿易委員會做成一份關於維修市場反競爭行為的報告，並向國會和民眾提交調查結果。 The goal of right-to-repair rules, advocates say, is to require companies to make their parts, tools and information available to consumers and repair shops in order to keep devices from ending up in the scrap heap. They argue that the rules restrict people's use of devices that they own and encourage a throwaway culture by making repairs too difficult. 倡議人士表示，維修權規定的目的是要求企業向消費者和維修商家提供零組件、工具及資訊，以免這些裝置最終被扔進垃圾堆。他們主張，目前的慣例對人們使用自己的裝置設下限制，並透過讓維修變得太過困難的方式，助長了一種用完即丟的文化。 They also argue that it's part of a culture of planned obsolescence — the idea that products are designed to be short-lived in order to encourage people to buy more stuff. That contributes to wasted natural resources and energy use at a time when climate change requires movement in the opposite direction to rein in planet-warming emissions. 他們還認為，這是一種計畫性淘汰文化的一部分，即為了鼓勵人們購買更多東西，產品被設計成短命的。在氣候變遷需要採取反向行動來控制溫室氣體排放的此際，這助長了自然資源的浪費以及能源的使用。 Manufacturing a new device or appliance is still largely reliant on polluting sources of energy — electricity generated from burning fossil fuels, for instance — and constitutes the largest environmental impact for most products. 製造一種新設備或裝置在很大程度上，仍仰賴會造成汙染的能源，例如燃燒化石燃料產生的電力，對大多數產品而言，這正是構成最大環境影響的因素。 Source article: https://udn.com/news/story/6904/5015841   Next Article   Topic: Help for Curing The Phone Addiction Like pretty much everyone, Susan Butler stares at her smartphone too much. But unlike most everyone, she took action, buying a $195 ring from a company called Ringly, which promises to “let you put your phone away and your mind at ease.” 和大多數人一樣，蘇珊．巴特勒盯著智慧手機看的時間太長了。不一樣的是，她採取了行動，從Ringly公司買了一只195美元的戒指，保證可「讓你手機放一旁，腦袋放輕鬆」。 Ringly does this by connecting its rings to a smartphone filter so that users can silence Gmail or Facebook notifications while preserving crucial alerts, which cause the ring to light up or vibrate. Ringly透過將戒指連接一個篩選程式辦到這一點，因此使用者可以讓Gmail或Facebook通知改為靜音，同時保留重要提示，這時戒指會發光或震動。 “Hopefully it will keep some distance between my phone and my hand,” said Ms. Butler, 27, a technology consultant who lives in Austin, Texas. 住在德州奧斯汀、27歲的科技顧問巴特勒說：「希望它能讓我的手機和我的手之間保持些距離。」 Given how quickly cellphones have taken over, it's easy to forget that they are still a relatively new technology. The first iPhone came out eight years ago. 手機快速地主導了人們的生活，很容易讓我們忘了它仍是相當新的科技。第一支iPhone問世不過是8年前的事。 Yet already people spend close to three hours a day looking at a mobile screen – and that excludes the time they spend actually talking on the phones. 然而已有人每天花近3小時看手機－這還不算實際用手機講電話的時間。 In a recent survey of smartphone use by Bank of America, about a third of respondents said they were “constantly” checking their smartphones, and a little more than two-thirds said that they went to bed with a smartphone by their side. New companies see a business opportunity in helping people cut back. 美國銀行最近一項智慧手機使用調查發現，約三分之一受訪者表示「不斷」查看手機；略多於三分之二的人說，睡覺時把手機放在身旁。一些新公司在幫助人們少用手機這件事上看到了商機。 “Technology has evolved so quickly that we have spiraled out of control and nobody has stopped to think about how this is going to impact our lives,” said Kate Unsworth, the founder of a British company, Kovert, that also makes high-tech jewelry to filter out everything but the most urgent stuff. 英國Kovert公司製造的高科技首飾能濾除最緊急資訊以外的所有訊息，創辦人凱特．安茲沃斯說：「科技發展飛快，讓我們失去掌控，沒有人停下來思考這一切會如何影響我們的生活。」 Smartwatches like the Apple Watch are designed to encourage more glancing and less phone checking. In June, Google and Levi's announced plans for a line of high-tech clothes that will allow people to do things like turn off a ringing phone by swiping their jacket cuff. Apple Watch之類智慧手表設計宗旨在於讓人多簡單過目，少滑手機。谷歌和Levi's六月宣布一項高科技服飾系列的合作計畫，讓人們能做拍打外套袖口就關掉手機響鈴之類的事。 Offtime limits customers' access to apps they overuse and produce charts on how much time they spend on their phones. Moment encourages people to share their phone use with friends to compete in a game of who can look at their phone the least. And Light Phone, a credit-card-size phone that does nothing but make and receive phone calls. Offtime程式限制顧客開啟過度使用的應用程式，並製作圖表顯示他們花在手機上的時間。Moment鼓勵人們和朋友分享自己使用手機的狀況並互相比賽，看看誰能最少看手機。還有信用卡大小的手機Light Phone，只能撥打及接聽電話。 NoPhone is a $12 piece of plastic that looks like a smartphone but actually does nothing. “Most people don't think about phone addiction as a real thing until you're like, ‘O.K., they're buying a piece of plastic because they are worried about their friend,' ” said Van Gould, head of the nascent venture that had sold close to 3,200 NoPhones. NoPhone是塊12美元的塑膠，看來像支智慧手機，實際上啥也不能做。這家新興公司已售出近3200支NoPhone，老闆范恩．古德說：「多數人沒把手機成癮真當個問題，直到你覺得『是的，他們買了一件塑膠，因為他們擔心朋友。』」 Adam Gazzaley, a neurologist and neuroscience professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said, “You have a population that is starting to say, ‘Wait, we love all this technology but there seems to be a cost – whether it's my relationship or my work or my safety because I'm driving and texting.' ” 舊金山加州大學神經病學家暨神經科學教授亞當．加札利說：「有一群人開始說『等等，我們愛這些科技，但似乎要付代價－無論是我的感情、工作或安全，因為我邊開車邊打簡訊。」 Some products are trying to find a balance. Google Now uses data to bother you only when you need it. “If I'm about to forget my kid's birthday I want the phone to scream at me until I do something about it,” said Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of products. 有些產品試著尋求平衡。Google Now只在你需要時用數據打擾你。Google產品資深副總裁桑達．皮柴說：「在我將要忘記孩子的生日時，我要手機對我尖叫，直到我讓它停止。」 Smartphones are a potent delivery mechanism for two fundamental human impulses, according to Paul Atchley, a psychology professor at the University of Kansas: our quest to find new and interesting distractions, and our desire to feel that we have checked off a task. 堪薩斯大學心理學教授保羅．艾區利表示，對於兩項基本的人類衝動而言，智慧手機是有力的傳遞機制：尋求新鮮有趣的娛樂，以及感覺自己檢查過一項工作的欲望。 “The brain gets literally rewired to switch – to constantly seek out novelty, which makes putting the phone down difficult,” he said. 他說：「大腦實際上會重新連接以轉變，持續尋求新奇事物，這使得放下手機很困難。」 Addiction or not, Ms. Butler still sought help from Ringly. 無論成癮與否，巴特勒仍持續自Ringly尋求幫助。 Mr. Atchley is skeptical. Successful treatment, he said, is about controlling our demons – not outsourcing them. 艾區利表示懷疑。他說，成功的治療在於控制自己的心魔－而非將此事外包。 In technology, as in life, a little willpower goes a long way. 面對科技，一如面對生活，一點點意志力就很有用。 Source article: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/282793/web/#2L-6186766L

Voice search is an important marketing trend, with consumers wanting convenience when searching. Here are some tips to help you optimize your website for voice search: 1. Use conversational-style phrasing 2. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly 3. Optimize using action-driven and local questions 4. Add some microdata to your web pages 5. Do understand the key similarities and differences of Siri, Cortana, and Google Now. With the rise of smart speakers and voice search on our mobile devices, it's more important than ever that your business has a voice search strategy. The results may not come in an instant, but as long as you exert efforts in advancing your SEO pursuit, success is just around the corner. SEO service allows your potential clients to find you online at any time, on any device. First Page has the best SEO services that increases your search rankings and get discovered more online. To understand better about other SEO strategies, you may visit https://www.firstpage.asia/seo/ Source: https://www.firstpage.asia/blog/improve-websites-seo-voice-search/

I understand that when people say there's a discovery problem, what they're really saying is, I have a discovery problem, people aren't finding my podcast. And so it kind of makes me scratch my head when I hear that because if only there was like some sort of tool that would search the entire internet. Oh, that's right, you may have heard of one. It's called Google. Today, we have a tool that makes it easier to be found in Google Now, right now, wherever you're at your current website has a ranking. And what you can do is go into this tool, it's called it's got a funny name, mangools.  Mangools allows you to see where you're currently ranking. Then you can type in your topic and you can see keywords. The key of this is you can see what are the popular keywords, and then it'll say, oh, if you wrote about this particular topic, you would have a good chance of scoring at the top of search engines because of where you currently rank. So there's a whole analysis tool, they analyze your website, there are tools in there to tracking your backlinks. If you ever have somebody ask you, Hey, can I do some sort of guest posting or they're really looking for is a backlink to their website? They even have an extension for your browser. So you can go to different websites and kind of do a quick analysis of what that website is doing and how it's ranking and keywords and things like that. They have a 10-day free version, that if you want to kick the tires on this, which is enough time, it's a little over a week to basically see the tools that are available, and see where your website is currently ranking and then see what keywords that you could actually go after. If you want to then from that point, start to use this on a regular basis. It's not super expensive for an SEO tool. It comes in at $29 a month if you do an annual plan. If you do it month to month, it is quite a bit more expensive. It is $49 a month. So you save 40% by doing an annual plan, but it's a pretty handy tool. I do like the extension where you can kind of go to different websites. Again, it's called man goals. And it's got a whole suite with one thing in mind and that's helping you rank higher in search engines. And when people talk about discovery problems, well, you can help get discovered by using band ghouls.WebsiteSchool of Podcasting The ultimate resource for learning how to podcast the right way Create a great-looking website for your podcast with ZERO coding.Try it for free for 7 Days at www.trypodpage.comSupport the show

EP251 - 2021 Annual Predictions 2020 Recap – Predictions made on episode 204 2020 Predictions Recap Scot Shopify wilts a bit – new competition comes out with different angles (marketcap stays static) – No Fedex does something drastic – buy eBay? Merge with Alibaba? No (but shoprunner for 0.5) The year of returns – “happy returns” – a startup raises $100M+ in space. No (but 0.5 for year of returns) Mallageddon continues At least another 8k stores Yes 8721 stores +1 Google gets aggressive in ecommerce Yes +1 (Bill Ready, etc…) Score 3/5 Jason Walmart – growth slows due to completion of grocery build out. Marc Lore leaves Walmart. No on growth, yes on Marc Lore (0.5) Amazon – Opens affordable grocery concept. Digital grocery wars heat up. Yes Owned brands continue to grow. 5% of retail in 2019, could be 8-10% in 2020 (as measured by IRI, for CPG private label). Yes Installment Payments heat up – At least one company is acquired (Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, QuadPay, Sizzle) Yes (IPO’s) Digital in-store heats up, QR codes make a comeback Yes Score 4.5/5 2021 Predictions Jason: Made to Order apparel business > 9 figures Retailer offers viable health alt insurance option to consumers Grocery E-Com > 10%  someone deploys(not pilots) MFC Amazon Shopify Competitor (shipping solution) Retail Media > $20B Bonus – More store closures in 2021 than 2020. Scot: Amazon move to same day prime by opening a huge wave of neighborhood DCs (near DSPs) Shipping (Shopify) – launch own DSP Shopify marketplace  ‘zero friction addiction’ sticks – I’ve seen 30-40% repeated a lot, I think it’s 60-80%. commerce penetration says at 16% or better in 2021. spac/ipo? Dnvb wave Bonus: post-covid anti-consumerism/materialism wave Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 251 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, January 21st, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 251 being recorded on Thursday January 21st 2021 that’s a lot of twenty ones I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:42] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners. It’s our annual tradition here at the Jason Scott show put out some predictions it’s a little bit of a Jason versus Scott competition to see which of us is best at predicting the trends, and the future of retail e-commerce and payments. [1:01] If you’ve been following us for a while way back in episode 204 that’s when we made our predictions for 2020 we did that in I believe January of 2020 just like we’re doing here in 2021. And way back then we combined an annual recap and then we did our predictions and that show was six hours, so being why is podcasters we decided that’s a lot of Jason Scott to just in one sitting so, good news we have split it up this year so last week we did the annual recap and then this year that frees us up to do the predictions. So what we like to do here is go through our predictions and score how we did so that’ll be the first half of this episode, and then to make it fun we like to read each other’s predictions and see how the other person did and then try to do a, yeah a negotiation I guess I would call it yeah so we try to come to terms with some kind of a scoring it’s always hard is. Use a bit Jason so bad try to try to sandbag a little bit so we’ll see if that works out this year. Jason anything you want to add before we jump into it. Jason: [2:18] No I want this to be one of my favorite shows of the year but as you alluded to I generally get shellacked so bad that it starts out fun for me and by the end I’m just totally depressed. Scot: [2:31] Yeah well we’ll see we’ll see how it goes free this year. Jason: [2:34] Yeah it’s a new year so I’m optimistic it’s like the San Diego chart or La chargers at the beginning of the Season before they have to pay anyone. Scot: [2:44] I will say when we first started podcasting you said Scott I’ve read all these articles in the biggest thing is being consistent and that was in 2015, so dang if we haven’t been consistent so we started in November of 2015 so then we did 16 17 18 19, 20 so this will be our sixth year of making these predictions if I’m doing my math right. Jason: [3:08] That I don’t think you are right. Scot: [3:11] I may have an N plus 1 from this is either our fifth or sixth year of doing these predictions. Jason: [3:18] We’ll get the intern on that but let’s let’s jump into them so I have your 2020 predictions in front of me, and your first one was kind of Doom and Gloom you is I’m recalling in January of 2020 Shopify was very hot and Buzzy and I believe your prediction was that they would Wilt a little bit and that new competition would come on in with more Innovative angles and that they would have a decline. Scot: [3:48] Yeah I kind of blame you for this when you get me so sold on headless Commerce I probably jumped the gun a little bit also again we made these predictions in January and I don’t think we had even heard of coronavirus at that point. I don’t know do you remember. Jason: [4:04] It was not common because I had a trip coming up at the time to China I had actually like they were starting to like, mildly talk about it in January then but definitely yeah these predictions were not influenced by any Corona awareness. Scot: [4:24] So this was a total zero. Jason: [4:27] Yeah I want to say their stock was at 450 when you made that prediction and you can get it for the budget price of 1193 right now. Scot: [4:35] Yeah it was super overpriced and then covid hit and then the revenue surged from like 50 percent growth to a hundred percent growth and then the stock followed and yeah so that was a bad one so that that one was a zero it was a dud. Jason: [4:49] It’s good it’s good to get one of those under your belt though, um so then your second prediction was that FedEx would do something dramatic like by eBay or merge with Ali Baba. Scot: [5:06] Yeah the driver on this one is you know the the Amazon is exerting pressure across multiple ecosystems simultaneously and one of them is shipping, and I do feel like UPS and FedEx are feeling that pressure again the pandemic just kind of change this one so everyone I think. Yep stopped worrying about oh my gosh what’s going to happen with the Amazon to how do we ship so many packages and so this was a Miss 2, I will throw myself to the the jury though there was the shop Runner acquisition which I think is massively. This effectively gives FedEx a complete Prime competitor so they’re going they’ve won up to Amazon. Shop owners better than Prime 10 times as many subscribers I. Jason: [5:57] I believe. Scot: [5:58] Well I have to have someone fact. Jason: [5:59] Amazon might actually be getting out of the Prime business because they just they don’t want to compete with the the FedEx shop Runner duopoly. Scot: [6:08] Could happen. Jason: [6:09] Yeah I totally see the spirit of this prediction there was a lot of financial stress on FedEx and yeah I could you could imagine something, big happening I think this illustrates to me like one of my biggest learnings from having done a bunch of these prediction shows which is. Having a good idea of what might happen isn’t even as useful as, getting lucky on the time Horizon because I feel like you and I have both made predictions that. But we’re just too early right or or something like that so still wouldn’t surprise me to see, some dramatic evolution of those those carriers I’ll give you half a point for shop running because I’m a generous guy, I believe in the earnings call someone asked if chaperone was going to have an impact on their financials and they said not that it wasn’t a material acquisition but. I kind of suspect sharpener was a little bit of a sort of a budget exit for for shop Runner. Scot: [7:18] That’s corporate speak for this is the future of our company. Jason: [7:22] Who knows maybe maybe it will be I hope it is for them so I’ll give you I’m giving you zero on Shopify I’ll give you half a point for for shop Runner I believe they also bought a cardboard box company that you failed to mention. I’m joking. Scot: [7:37] Okay number three. Jason: [7:41] Yeah so number three this will be the year of returns and you predicted that happy returns which is one of the the vendors that facilitates e-commerce returns, would make a huge cash raised in the in the space you said they’d raise a hundred million dollars. Scot: [8:03] In this one I failed to learn from many of your failures which are being too specific so I was super specific here I tried to capture it by making your returns, I will again throw myself to the jury that we did have returned again so the, other side of the ship again coin is we are now swimming in returns you know could be, super specific and say that really didn’t happen in the year it did happen in the bookends of our episodes though so I don’t know, I’ll be generous to you on that one for one of your predictions of you be generous to me so I do feel like it is a big return to your and there were several articles written about the you know this, there’s one did you see it where it should look UPS facility and people like literally swimming in packages, so you know I do think it was a year of returns where there was a much brighter light. Shine on that but happy returns did not raise their hundred million bummer for those guys, there was so I did look and there was a fair amount of funding activity so happy return this has raised 25 return logic to, Loop returns 15 million so it is a hot category I get a lot of calls from VC’s poking around this category so. So I don’t actually know how to score this one so I’ll defer to you. Jason: [9:25] Yeah I’ll give you half a point because I agree it was just a poorly worded prediction I think the spirit of your predictions that it would be a significant year for returns is fair. As it happens like it’s going to be 20 21 is going to be the big return year and while there was a lot of returns the first half of January a lot of that still, going to be in progress and we certainly haven’t seen any of the numbers yet but I would certainly concur that there’s going to be a lot of. Interesting things going on in returns this year in response to, do you know the huge spike in e-commerce sales we saw we saw last year so I’ll give you half a point. Scot: [10:09] So generous. Jason: [10:11] Yeah well you know it’s the I feel like when you when you lose by a lot like there’s no point in playing really tight defense. And I feel like this next one is not going to be very controversial on the scoring. Mulligan and continues in 2020 and I thank you you couldn’t have known what a disaster 2020 is going to be from malls or would be come from Al’s. Foot traffic in the malls is probably down fifty percent for the year, sales for the anchor stores is down more than 30 percent for the year so is a disaster again you are pretty specific on your prediction you you said that at least 8,000 stores would close and, I believe that the source that you and I must use for that had the number at 8720 one so you you cleared it by 10%. Scot: [11:10] Yeah this is where oddly enough to pandemic Health my prediction. I don’t know I feel like I feel like there’s some be another feel like the big wave is actually coming this year have you seen any predictions on that are you going to punch suffocate on that. Jason: [11:25] So I do have a mild prediction in the space like the the public prediction that comes up most often is, it is a huge amount of stores closing but over a five-year period so not necessarily all this year or next year but like 25 percent of retail stores closing over the next five years is the is the number and a thousand Mall’s closing over the next five years are the are the, kind of often reported public ones. Scot: [11:56] Yeah I could see it I’m I’m for newer listeners I’m down in North Carolina and, we have I’m in the Raleigh-Durham area there’s a little town called Carrie and it has kind of like a beam all and it just go by by epic games and they’re going to turn it into a headquarters I’ve been doing some little road trips around like going to the mountains recently, and the malls up there are literally maybe like 10% of the stores are open it’s like the weirdest thing in these small Southern malls that used to have, if they’d have a belk a Sears a JC Penney and Macy’s. Generally two of those anchors are gone and sometimes they’ll be 1 acre left sometimes maybe none so you’ll be in the mall and like the whole anchor is just like cordoned off with effectively duct tape or sometimes they’ll put some really weird stuff in there like, little tables of these people selling random tchotchkes like almost like a bizarre but I think it’s really really very odd and then there’s all these other weird dead parts of the mall where they’ll put in, you know like they’ll have like Thursday night Magic the Gathering night no. But it’s like 8,000 square feet used one night for some you know game event for something so it’s really strange going into some of these malls that are on their last leg. Jason: [13:11] Yeah. Excuse me the that the top malls are still doing pretty well although they were even negatively affected by by covid but yeah you know covid-19, apparel is already in trouble and covid-19 you / rough on apparel and of course. You know as apparel goes department stores go and his department store just go malls go so you basically had covid knocking down this, series of, of dominoes and yeah it’s it’s going to be pretty rough couple of years for you know I personally doubt that we’re ever going to see. Department stores or apparel stores or malls get back to kind of pretty pandemic levels. Scot: [14:03] I know this one took shop so let’s move on. Jason: [14:05] Yeah exactly figuratively and literally and so then your fifth prediction in this one’s going to be yeah I’m going to be curious to hear you you talk to this one Google gets aggressive in e-commerce. Scot: [14:19] Yeah and this one I was careful to not say that it would work and so what they did if we kind of recap the highlights of 2020 from Google what they’ve done is they hired a guy Bill ready from PayPal so they went out and found someone that, you know has e-commerce chops to bring into the company, he immediately kind of opened up Headey throttled Google shopping so let every Merchant kind of come in there then they’ve invested a lot on, this program is really weird because it has like 16 different names I like by on Google but they don’t really call it that they call it Google shopping actions I think it’s at the latest name. Jason: [14:58] I think you are correct yes. Scot: [15:00] Yeah which doesn’t really make any sense to me so again I didn’t say they’d be effective on these things it’s just say that, aggressive so then they that sir I think of that as their Marketplace I don’t think they like to call it that but to me it’s a Marketplace because you buy on Google and just like buy on Amazon and then they were out the order to you versus sending people to your website your, your responsive website so they took away all the missions for that so that advertisers would would utilize it more and and I guess they must have gotten, push back and then so and then they’ve been they also change the commission’s on Google shopping they. I remember they changed economics I couldn’t find an article to find the time on that but I remember that happening there too so yeah and then you know the, those are the things that say they got a little bit of aggressive there. Jason: [15:57] Yeah well so I think with your caveat I’ll totally agree and give you a point I think they did. Do do a lot and I’m not even going to say that they have won’t work but they haven’t yielded. Significant results yet but but certainly like we’ve seen a lot of activity there so I’ll give you the point, so you get Molly get in in Google full points so that’s two I gave you half for FedEx and happy returns so that’s three out of five for your 2020. Scot: [16:30] Awesome 60% predicting that’s a it’s actually pretty good, one thing I would comment on here that’s interesting is there was a report out by Cowan John Blackledge and, I tweeted on this and I sent it to you Jason not know if you had time to read it but they went out and did a survey and I’ll let you opine on surveys but it was a lot of folks like you so as a lot of these super fancy Executives at Ad Agency type places. Jason: [16:58] Most of them had shorter titles than me. Scot: [17:00] That have long titles except longest titles where yours is longest and effectively said you know what are you seeing with Amazon ads and I thought it was really fascinating, the I don’t want to spend our whole show on it but one of the ones that really got my attention was you know, there was the usual do you see people spending more or less on Amazon ads and Evans like more and then the most interesting one was amongst your client base where are the dollars coming from, and one way they asked the question it was like largely TV but then another way they asked the question it was kind of like, within your maybe they think the question had a digital framing so it was kind of like within your, customers digital budget where the dollars coming from and it was like 80 percent Google, number one was Facebook so it was like really taking sheer from Facebook but then also from Google Now they didn’t I wish the had gotten a little bit nuanced there because you and I know, critical Google includes a fair amount of double-click kind of banner ad type stuff display. [18:14] They didn’t explicitly say Google search so it would have been nice to see in that broken out because it could be what the the digital strategic, senior VP directors were saying was you know it’s Google display not Google search but in any case, the message to me was Amazon’s number three, pretty far behind the duopoly of Facebook and Google but you know they the other chart those interesting was the asking you know what do you say what are your clients say has the highest return on ad spend and Amazon was like Head and Shoulders above, so it’s really fascinating reading all the survey results directionally said to me. [19:00] You know if I’m Google and Facebook I need to be paying a lot more attention to what’s going on in Amazon and figure out how to try to stop them, so that was the reason I made this prediction and I think anything I would, I haven’t done this but I do think you’re going to see the rest of the ad world really Step Up, and then the thing this new is the increased pressure so they got Amazon one front they’ve got kind of privacy concerns on the other, and then like iOS is coming you know more about this than I do but iOS is coming out with this thing that’s just kind of like really kill a lot of their tracking, and then then you got the government coming after them on the other side so so it’s gonna be really interesting to see you know Facebook Google and how they navigate this this three-way encroachment that’s happening on. Jason: [19:50] Yeah yeah there’s a lot of market dynamics going on it’s super interesting and you know I think you summarized it pretty well I would just for listeners that don’t follow adtech that much. [20:02] 2021 is a weird year a lot of traditional television you know goes on new programming a lot of which didn’t come out this year and on Live Events a lot of which didn’t happen this year so you know it was super easy for marketers to shift, a lot of those event television dollars to other channels so digital got a lot of those dollars but then there was a lot of. Politics and controversy going on in the world and there was a lot of concern around brand protection when you just you know bottle out of digital ads on Facebook would they show up next to, you know inappropriate negative news and all sorts of other things and so one way in which Amazon, benefits is it’s a very brand safe place like there’s no negative editorial on Amazon it’s very brand safe place to put your money in a storm and I would basically agree with the sentiment of the Cowan survey, amongst all my clients Amazon has the most mindshare as a, a new advertising vehicle I would I would almost argue they have too much mindshare like people people are irrationally focused on them, and I you know I’m not sure they always measure their ads in the best way so I would I would always be curious to talk with someone about what their success criteria are when they think that Amazon has the highest row ads but, um but that’s maybe for another show. Scot: [21:31] Yeah we’ll do a am Jason debunks your Amazon row s shop that’ll be a barrel of monkeys. Jason: [21:36] Exactly not saying it’s a it’s I mean it’s a good vehicle there’s good eyeballs to be had there but it definitely needs to be part of a portfolio and you strategically. Scot: [21:45] Okay I’m just giving you a hard time well ads Chief row as bubble popper to your title okay let’s jump into your predictions. Jason: [21:57] Yeah I know the audience is super excited for these. Scot: [22:00] I’ll create a dramatic pause here. Number one Walmart this one you are very explicit you said Walmart’s growth is going to slow way way down, because they’re gonna lap their Grocery and people are just so tired of curbside grocery just. Done with it it’s just so boring and then you said, and and I’ll put a huge emphasis on the ant here and Mark Lori leaves Walmart so as you and I know with logic gonna have both sides of that and this is clearly not a norm. So first I thought you were going to win this one with that first with the mark Laurie thing so this is a bit of news Mark Laurie hat is leaving Walmart it was announced. This week last week. Jason: [22:52] You asked for it yet. Scot: [22:53] Last week. He’s going to build the city of the future how exciting is that you did not have that in your prediction so I think that’s a Miss if you could if you had had Mark Lori Leafs Walmart to them say future I would have just like, drop the mic and giving you a thousand points and walked off at this point in the show, so in all seriousness the growth did not slow the pandemic cut against you on this one you know Walmart’s been growing at a tremendous Pace due to endemic and they were the only store open, so that has really helped them immensely during during these times, so since you were generous with generous with me I will be generous with you and that’s definitely a half point because of the Lori part but the first part is kind of smelly so, I think I’m just being so so generous here. Jason: [23:42] Yeah I’m not sure it’s any more smelly than the Shopify will crater, so I feel like we have parity there the differences I gave you half a well not you only had the Shopify prediction I feel like it’s pretty clear this I have Point prediction my I feel like my logic behind Walmart was sound and thrilled to be wrong sorry sorry for why I’m wrong but obviously grocery to dramatically accelerated so I couldn’t I couldn’t have been more wrong on that half, but almost certainly the first place anyone heard that Mark Glory might be leaving Walmart was was on our show a year ago so. I’ll take that. Scot: [24:23] And then yeah so good work on that one but you missed the city of the future thing. And I’m going to be excited you know hopefully Mark if you’re listening we would love to be the podcasters for the city of the future I think I think we would be doing a good job there Jason wants to be would you say you want to be the Marshal or the sheriff or something you want to ride on that. Jason: [24:40] That would be even cooler especially if I get to wear like Mandalorian armor but I was I was hoping for deputy mayor. Scot: [24:49] Okay Deputy Mayor do you get to ride horses deputy mayor or no. Jason: [24:53] I feel like if your Deputy Mayor you get to decide what you write. Scot: [24:58] You guys have that sense of cowboy up there in Chicago you could you could borrow his horse. Jason: [25:02] Yeah I’m hoping the story city of the future is somewhere tropical but I’m kind of worried that Manhattan is so affordable right now that he might buy that and turn it into a city of the future. Scot: [25:13] Brooklyn strict strikethrough city of the future. Um okay you’re number two was related to Amazon and you did a little clever hedging here you said they’re going to open an affordable grocery Concept in the digital grocery Wars will heat up, you are really right on the digital grocery were part of that that one how do you score yourself on the opening up an affordable grocery. Jason: [25:41] I scare myself a hundred percent they we now have five Amazon Fresh stores in California and two in Chicago. Scot: [25:52] And then what’s the that’s the big one that has them – cart thing right. Jason: [25:57] Yeah yeah so it’s – card it’s like a 20,000 square foot grocery store and it’s it’s you know very competitive prices on Main Line groceries as opposed to the, that expensive premium brands that are exclusively carried at Whole Foods. Scot: [26:14] Whole paycheck. Jason: [26:15] Exactly the hey. Scot: [26:15] Um Okay cool so that that’s a plus one. Jason: [26:19] Yeah and grocery words heated up more than I could have ever known thanks to covid-19. Scot: [26:24] Yeah yeah that was a nail down. Um number three owned Brands continue to grow five percent of retail and to five percent of retail in 2019 could be eight to ten percent in 2020 as measured by RI for CPT private label. I don’t know what the back into that means but yeah how did Dad Edge do. Jason: [26:48] I got it I’ll be on it so iri is a data reporting company that tracks, sales by product category in, the grocery and mass base and they they have a data set for private label. In hindsight I inadvertently sandbagged this a little bit I think the spirit of what I intended was that. Private label would rapidly grow in 2020 in that that has absolutely been true it’s growing it like four times the, pace of national Brands the penetration according to iri is actually a little higher than I wrote here so they’re fifteen percent right now. So I feel like I hit both the spirit and I inadvertently wept the number more than I meant to. Scot: [27:44] Wow now do they break out private late what you call you have a. Jason: [27:50] No I do differentiate exclusive Brands versus private label and they don’t to them it’s all private label. They do Break It Out by subcategories like fresh Frozen Frozen shelf-stable stuff like that the, it was a big year for private label Target launched at the very beginning of the year a significant new brand that they expect good and gather they expect, it to eventually be a 20 billion dollar your brand and it sold more than two billion dollars in the first year so, those brands are selling really well like every digitally native brand we’ve ever talked about that gets all this Buzz not one of them has sold two billion dollars in a year so. Yeah yeah absolutely but so I’m taking that one. Scot: [28:39] Okay that’s fair enough so that puts you two and a half so within Striking Distance of me so hopefully your next to or total misses, number four for you was installment payments heat up at least one company is acquired and you listed a firm after pay dalarna I like to say that one quad pay and sizzle. Jason: [28:59] I made this prediction exclusively so you could say karna. Scot: [29:03] Sizzle karna learn. So this one was a win so a firm went public after pay is public know they did a spec what happened they expect it up. Let me see I can’t remember after the note they went they did a public offering. In Australia that’s why it was weird yeah I remember it was like kind of a little unusual it wasn’t listed in the u.s. so they did an IPO not you know, if I were going to be nitpicky I would say neither of them was acquired which is your prediction but it did heat up, it’s funny I’ve been meaning to send you some screenshots I was buying a couple things and literally four of these would be on the, the checkout and it was really weird because they would have their almost competing at the checkout with like different offers so some of them would say, two payments of 59 and no-one would say six payments of 4 and I was like sitting there like, oh my God like his average consumer the calculus on this thing is kind of wacky of how to figure out which of these 12 offers is going to be best. Jason: [30:13] Yeah yeah the cognitive load can get pretty high when they start NASCAR racing up the checkout with multiple buy now pay later options. Scot: [30:20] Yeah and there’s some point it seems like it would hurt conversions because there’s like the what’s that thing about choice you guys talk about all the time. Jason: [30:27] Yeah Paradox of choice is what you’re thinking of but yeah they’re just a lot more friction yeah. Scot: [30:32] Once you got four of them you’re going to be like yeah I’m not gonna buy this thing so so that puts you over the top at three and a half right there. Jason: [30:42] You can hear the music and In fairness I like if you were going to be a really strict greater I actually don’t think any of these got acquired like prove your point the, partly because it heated up faster than I expected and their valuations are too high to get acquired now like for the most part, The Firm did their IPO ass week and I think it went up 90% after the so they underpriced it. Scot: [31:07] Yeah it’s now a bad IPO if you don’t more than double them first. Jason: [31:10] Gotcha. Scot: [31:11] We’ll have to do a whole show on that and then your last one I feel. You know even though I’m losing I feel good for you because you’ve been talking about this for literally since the first day I met you you’re probably like the first day I met you or probably like, let’s talk about Hugh are codes and how excited I am about him so this is like me claiming you know making my annual prediction that Amazon’s going to be with FedEx, I know it’s going to happen it’s just whenever I’ve given up on it at this point so you predicting QR codes you get the persistent award you’ve been saying it for years so you know every time I go to one of the restaurants here in North Carolina that’s open I think of you because I have to scan a QR code to get my menu and then I do this cool little scan of a another the little receipt to pay and you know QR codes are definitely back you totally called this one the pandemic you got the pandemic assist so that was a solid one, any other interesting use cases you’ve seen. Jason: [32:14] Yeah no so pretty Point like obviously I did not foresee the covid use cases but all these contact us things you know certainly came up the thing we talked about just a second ago the bill me now pay me later pay later services, have introduced a lot more QR codes because they you know they started out offering their service online and not in stores and then as they got bigger they all wanted in-store Solutions and those are mostly activated, via an in-store QR code so like I want to say, after pay you can now use it like CVS drugstore with the QR code, um PayPal rolled out in store payments with a QR code and then of course thanks to covid, Starbucks Mobile payment just completely exploded and so they’ve they say now that over 25% of all their sales are via QR code so, so lots of different use cases and then a few stores are starting to roll them out on shelf Edge as well for product information so, some some Walmart prototype stores and a few other stores letting you scan QR codes, to get product information in the store the Nike House of Innovations. Scot: [33:35] Well congratulations you cleaned my clock this year so 4.5 versus three so that was a 90% prediction rate very very impressive my friend. Jason: [33:45] Even a broken clock is right twice a year or twice a day but yeah. I ruined that one. Scot: [33:54] That’s ironic. Jason: [33:55] Yeah I will say I’m super grateful because I feel like you and I have both had this thing where we predicted something that didn’t happen and then we skipped a year and it happened. Like oxa earbuds for example or something you know and so I. Scot: [34:13] Yeah that was when I made for a while and then it finally happened the year I didn’t. Jason: [34:16] Exactly exactly so I’m grateful that I didn’t miss the QR year. Scot: [34:21] Well a blind squirrel finds a broken clock at least twice a year so as you as everyone knows. Jason: [34:25] Yeah yeah I’m I’m clearly not the sharpest bulb in the drawer. Scot: [34:29] Okay hopefully that flows into your predictions let’s see it’s you are the winner in the champion of 2020 what do you have in store for listeners for 2021 predictions. Jason: [34:44] Yeah yeah well I’m excited about these for now we’ll see what happens a year from now, but so prediction number one made-to-order apparel business achieves nine figures in Revenue so that’s a hundred million dollars if I did my math right, um I’m super bullish on these on made-to-order taking a significant chunk out of the apparel business as people may know, um Amazon launched made-to-order t-shirt M Taylor Nike a lot a lot of folks doing pilots and kind of, dipping their toe asked year and so I’m going to go out on a limb and say at least one of these catches some scale and 2021. Scot: [35:30] What are some examples of some of them these this does not have to be part of your prediction I’m not kneeling you down because specific but I want to make sure I understand. Jason: [35:35] Yeah yeah so so Amazon made for me Product would be 1M Taylor in ticino Nike ID proper cloth. Scot: [35:50] Doesn’t it Jesus have one week like print the souls or something. Jason: [35:53] Yeah they’re so there’s a ton in Footwear that’s kind of cosmetic personalization so Vans Converse David us Adidas had custom sweater pilot, there’s a small direct-to-consumer apparel brand called Ministry of Supply that has some interesting like, in-store weaving machine so there’s, there’s a number of things it’s mostly been a novelty up till now so I feel like this is a stretch prediction to get 200 million in Revenue. Scot: [36:30] We will see in your shirt Nike ID already isn’t there. Jason: [36:36] So that’s going to be a tricky one because to me. Scot: [36:38] I’m wise to your sandbagging. Jason: [36:39] They don’t break out the revenue for that so I like I doubt I’ll be able to use that one as a win. Scot: [36:45] Okay alright I’m going to have to come back and listen to this if next year you use it as when all right. Jason: [36:49] Yeah I can Bank on you not remembering it or not be willing not be willing to remember re-listen to the show. Scot: [36:57] I just set a calendar appointment for for January 21 2022 so I’m on I’m headed. Jason: [37:04] Yeah so prediction number to a retailer will offer a viable health insurance alternative to Consumers so, the spirit of this retailers are totally leaning into Healthcare initiatives Amazon of course went all in with a pharmacy they offer some healthcare options for employees at this point so that could become, consumer-facing Walmart has opened a handful of healthcare clinics Walgreens just announced a significant new division with 200 employees focused on delivering Healthcare so, um my I am predicting that one of these gets to scale and offers a viable Nationwide Healthcare alternative that does not require traditional insurance. Scot: [37:57] Okay and so this is pretty brave given Amazon just and wound their their initiative with was it JP Morgan and yeah. Jason: [38:05] But I am I’m banking on the fact that they Unwound that because they think they have a better solution on their own we’ll see. [38:16] So then number three we talked about the grocery war is heating up last year and then of course thanks to covid a heated up a lot more than expected, um so I think that the interesting one this year is I am predicting that they are going to stay at these very high levels, our friend Sue charita from Forrester just wrote a grocery article yesterday and she talked about how it was a huge year for digital grocery but they in 2021 all the restaurants are going to open back up, and that she expected digital grocery to shrink back down maybe not to pre-pandemic levels but to go down a lot, um I actually don’t think that’s going to happen I think that a ton of people have formed a new digital grocery habit I’m not saying they’re going to do all their grocery shopping online, but I think on a go-forward basis a big chunk of people are going to do a significant piece of their grocery shopping online and so I think, um next year that for 2021 10% of all groceries will be sold online, and I think as a result of that retailers are going to have to invest in operationalizing those those services and making them more profitable so I think it’s pretty likely that a, a least one retailer will roll out these these micro fulfillment centers on a broader basis than just a pilot. Scot: [39:43] Cool and specifically for grocery though because they are envisioning they would need to be refrigerated or. Jason: [39:50] Yeah most of them are at least two climate zones many are three climate zones so frequently they have like ambient refrigerated and Frozen. Scot: [39:59] Three climate zones nice is Rainforest in Ops. Jason: [40:01] Yeah I don’t I don’t know if it’s an option it doesn’t seem like a practical option. Maybe if you’re selling like fish or plants in your in your extra fulfillment center. Scot: [40:14] Bananas you want to keep your bananas fresh up on the on the on the coconut trees. Jason: [40:20] All right not sure that’s how that works but okay so the number four and this is why I’m glad I’m going first because I feared that I would be stealing a prediction from you, so the. There was a lot of Buzz last year that Jeff Bezos Scott was getting personally involved in a Shopify competitor. And so so my prediction is that Amazon will watch a Shopify combat, which doesn’t seem that bold given that it was it was strongly rumored last year but my specific prediction is I think I have an idea of what it will be and I don’t think it’s what most people are expecting I think most people are. Expecting them to launch some kind of web store that competes with Shopify, and I think what Amazon is going to do to compete with Shopify is they’re going to open up their fulfillment Network to, for for third for sellers to fulfill their orders from their own websites and on a limited basis Amazon has, done this in the past and even does a little bit of this now but I think they’re really going to productize and make a lot more competitive, and offering where you put your inventory in the Amazon with just X Network and when you collect orders on your own website Amazon will cost effectively deliver them using their own delivery Fleet. Scot: [41:47] So they’ll make FBA kind of like more of a generic shipping solution kind of like almost like meaningless shit. Jason: [41:54] Exactly exactly a standalone offer that doesn’t require the Amazon Marketplace exactly. Scot: [41:59] Anderson all right. Jason: [42:03] And then I have a. Scot: [42:05] So no front-end SMB e-commerce thing is part of that. [42:18] You’re keeping it generic so you can catch a lot of possible. Jason: [42:22] Trying to keep it reasonable exactly. The the so my V prediction goes back to a trend that you were talking about the the Amazon media and I do think Amazon media is going to continue to be the, by far the biggest player of the Retailer’s but there’s a ton of, effort going on behind other retailers to get in on that action as well so, Walmart has you know launched a major media initiative the Walmart Media Group target has an initiative called Target Rundell Kroger has an initiative called Kroger Precision marketing, and perhaps the fastest-growing of all these growing faster even than Amazon is, instacart who is like one of the biggest beneficiaries of covid is now selling a ton of media so I think in aggregate all of these retailers selling ads are going to exceed 20 billion dollars in ad sales in. 2021. Scot: [43:21] Brickell they’ll be an arson to do have a way of tracking that. Jason: [43:25] We do not up perfect way but a number of the the stock analysts report on that emarketer has done, estimates on them in the past and some pieces of it we have actual data for. Scot: [43:44] Cool and then one of the things one of the behind the scenes things listeners may not know is we always do six predictions in case some of our Collide and I don’t think we had collisions can you want to reveal your six this kind of a bonus. Jason: [43:58] Yeah you you correctly predicted that over 8,000 stores would close last year and a lot of people feel like 20/20 was the peak covid year and they’re all these you know extra things, I actually think 2021 is going to be worse for store closures than 2020 so I’m predicting that will have more this year than we did last year. Scot: [44:21] So over a thousand seven hundred. Jason: [44:23] 31 Scot: [44:24] What if 31 all right that’s a very specific prediction I like it. Jason: [44:29] When I wrote it it wasn’t that specific but then you had. Scot: [44:33] I’ll put it in the show notes. Jason: [44:36] So so Scott what do you what do you what do you think’s going to happen this year. Scot: [44:40] Yeah so you know this one’s tough because I definitely feel the pain this year I think, I think I’ve had three or four years of pretty well walloping you so it felt really weird to not win this year so, dug deep on these and hopefully I’ll reverse it for next year. So number one it wouldn’t be a Jason Scott show without talking about Amazon a little bit more so I do have an Amazon predictions, I do think that they are going to use so they used covid to really scale up this DSP program and as you and I have talked about ship again they were somewhat immune from ship again as they control their own destiny, I think they’re going to really Flex on that and I think, I think covid has the Silver Lining to Amazon of covid around shipping is I think it’s given them the path to get to same day Prime, for you know a lot more places in a lot more skews so I think we’re going to see them really crank up one day shipping so that’s my prediction. Jason: [45:43] Okay and where do you how do you envision that gets Quantified like what is cranked up mean like it gets used a lot more or they offer it a lot more places or. Scot: [45:54] I think they’ll be an announcement now that I would imagine it’ll come and kind of Q3 where Amazon is going to announce for the holidays you know a. Millions of items available for same-day delivery through the holiday period something like that I think it’ll be a pretty material. Jason: [46:10] Okay I like it. Scot: [46:11] Change and I think they’re going to execute it and then, actually had written this down in there was an article that came out that talked about how they’re going to use these little micro DC’s there’s an article I think it was, squarely in the speculation do you remember who is it that is this guy’s in Seattle that come out with the stuff but, anyway they were speculating that Amazon is going to open up mm kind of micro DC’s so I don’t know about a specific number like that but it was interesting that I think I think a lot of people are seeing that this this could be the direction they go. Number two I do think so my train of thought here is, you know if your quote-unquote arming the rebels in your Shopify and and I was reluctant to make another Shopify protection but but here we go so then I did too so in this one I’m thinking if you’re arming the rebels you know what. [47:05] With ship again what the rebels need the rebels being smaller kind of retailers they need a lot of help with shipping right so FedEx and UPS are not adding enough capacity they’re really expensive first while guys, so then using USPS they were total epic fail during holiday 2020, so and then Shopify is already kind of got one little toe in this water with their fulfillment by Shopify every what they call it that’s what I call it so, you know if you’re them and you’re sitting on this massive hoard of cash and market cap and you want to help your, 300,000 if you get the number but this very large number of smaller businesses the, imagine having Shopify trucks just kind of driving around you know I think that would be really interesting and, it kind of ties with one of my other predictions but I think I think Amazon has proven to folks you can build last-mile fulfillment. With a lot less than you would think I think a lot of folks looked and said well I’ll have to build FedEx that is you know fifty billion dollars, but I think all in Amazon DSP program was was relatively like under four or five billion dollars from them to build out and. [48:23] What they did is they essentially use kind of almost a franchise model where all these local entrepreneurs fair amount of the risk and do a fair amount of execution and then Amazon can, work the incentives in the system so so I think what’s going to happen is Shopify we’ll look at that decode it and it makes a ton of sense for someone else to do it, sometimes I bounce between maybe like a one of the ship Bob’s or some of those guys doing it but I just don’t think anyone else has the resources I don’t think Google would do it I just don’t think they would, they would do this I don’t think Walmart would do it so I think someone’s going to do it in my best guess is it’s going to be Shopify. Jason: [49:00] Interesting one bit of Commerce news I’ll throw in that maybe supports that is, is listeners will know that the traditional carriers often have these um surge prices over holiday and now they’ve announced that they’re just going to keep the surge prices on. So it’s just it’s getting it’s getting more expensive and it’s it’s you know challenges the unit economics for a lot of product category so having some Alternatives could be interesting. Scot: [49:28] Yeah yeah and then my third prediction is also Shopify so so you know since that worked out so well for me last time, and then here again if I’m arming the rebels and I keep saying that because that’s kind of like their little catch phrase now you know one of the things that’s risky for Shopify is, I would bet that their stores in aggregate get sixty percent plus of their traffic from Facebook and social, um Facebook and other social folks which are largely Facebook’s of the. [50:07] The giant 800-pound gorilla here is there on Instagram, you know they have their own check out they’re starting to promote and Shopify as an option and whatnot but at some point the, you know so I mentioned this earlier these guys are under pressure the sad models under pressure from the privacy and the government and Amazon and everyone else, they’re increasing their work on Marketplace and other Commerce initiatives and then at some point do they say, we want a power that check out now and capture some comics from that because if you look at it Shopify almost, you know a very large portion of shopify’s Revenue comes from monetizing the shopping cart, so things like affirm things like PayPal things like their own payment system, etcetera so someone is going to get greedy on that and Facebook has kind of a pole position so if your Shopify, you need a hedge for that where you say if the amount of traffic going to our aggregate stores goes down we need to be able to drive them traffic and, Shopify has been kind of creeping up on this this is where you kind of have disagreed. They had this happen always forget what it used to be called it’s now called the shop app and it’s really just basically tracking your package and you know that kind of thing but that could become a front door so. [51:29] I think Shopify will have some option where you will be able to either get free traffic or by traffic from some app that’s installed on millions of phones that has some kind of a front door shopping experience. I don’t think it’s going to be like. You know I think it’s going to be more at the store level not the item level so meaning you could say I’m looking for stores that have really cool, dutch ovens and it will show you those kind of things but I don’t think you’ll be able to say you know, Star Wars Mandalorian six inch figure and get a result across all the Shopify stores. Jason: [52:05] Interesting all right. Scot: [52:07] You need that make you throw up in your mouth. Jason: [52:09] No like a lot of smart people think that that’s going to be a play like it. And I’m not convinced it won’t be my point is just like everyone’s like oh my gosh shopify’s winning and all these things they’re clearly going to do that and my point is just. Generating traffic and marketing yourselves to Consumers to get consumer eyeballs is a wildly different skill than anything shopify’s demonstrated so none of their previous success to me other than their access to Capital, really makes them more likely to succeed in, generating a lot of consumer traffic so I just think it’s it has some risk and then it has some complication, um in some ways that that new service would compete with the rebels right so that’s you know always one of the, the conflicts of having a Marketplace and fulfilling you know, providing services to people that want to sell direct so, we will see on that one I do like to point out everyone they keep liking use that metaphor of arming the rebels but if my Star Wars wars correct, the rebels eventually took all those arms and they blew up an under-construction death star with like a million enslaved construction workers on it so I’m not sure that that’s always a good thing. Scot: [53:32] Yeah yes it’s always a different perspective of who the rebels are right. Jason: [53:36] Exactly. Scot: [53:37] Um and then okay so then my next one so this is number four this is code related and I keep reading these articles about you know here in 2021, and you and I have had vastly different views of when covid-19, you know but but you know what I’ve been reading is a lot of people are predicting that these new habits we form will go away and we’ll go kind of back to the old way of the old ways covid ways and I’m specifically saying you know, we the digital adoption, I’ve seen I’ve seen a lot of surveys that say people are gonna kind of have thirty percent of this kind of new digital lifestyle stick, I think that’s actually the opposite I think 70% is going to stick, and the reason why is I like this phrase zero friction addiction what once you’ve gotten used to this kind of digital lifestyle of stuff showing up at your house, you know the digital Grocery and all the things that are going on, it amplifies the friction of that experience in a weird way that messes with your mind that that is hard to explain to people, and there’s some interesting studies about this but I think, I think we’re going to stay at this elevated adoption rate of digital will come down some but I think it’s going to stay a lot hotter than people think it will. Jason: [55:01] Yeah I certainly agree with the sentiment of that prediction I talked a lot about, these behaviors being One Way doors and two-way doors there some of the things people walk through it’s easy for them to walk back through a tar and other things once you go through that door it’s kind of a, permanent decision and I think a lot of these new behaviors are one-way door so I generally agree you’re going to this will be an interesting one with the judges next year because I’m not sure exactly how to quantify it but. Scot: [55:31] Yeah let me say can we use percentage of sales that are retailgeek. Jason: [55:37] Sure that our digital you mean okay what kind of percentage do are you expecting. Scot: [55:44] Well the trick is that the were numbers not out so I don’t know where we landed last year. Jason: [55:48] So we’re so, we can’t January of twenty twenty thirteen percent of all retail so the broadest definition of retail straight from the US Commerce 13 percent penetration the peak of, nineteen percent penetration in April and pretty consistently for the last four months of the year sixteen percent so we kind of jump from 13 to 16. Scot: [56:16] I’ve seen a chart that shows. Jason: [56:18] 34 yeah that’s that’s my friends and Mackenzie that smoked something and made a prediction that never came to fruition. They did also they were defining a narrower definition of retail they were taking a bunch of things out of retail they said can’t it doesn’t include cars because people don’t buy cars online it doesn’t include food because people don’t buy food online, and of course the both of those hypotheses are totally wrong and covid because people bought a lot of cars and food online. Scot: [56:50] Yeah if this Mackenzie company had achieved digital research retail officer then they would not have missed that one so. Jason: [56:58] Pretty confident Mackenzie has people with longer titles than me but yeah. Scot: [57:02] Okay so I will take so all right so you think it’s settled down in Q3 you 16% so he said. Yeah so I think it’s going to come off 30% off high so so I’ll say we stick it. Well if I see 14 necessarily not more than January is. Jason: [57:24] It’s one more than January. Scot: [57:26] Yeah thanks I’ll say we stay at 16. Jason: [57:29] Okay Bolt. Scot: [57:31] Okay you’re right now alright prediction and were five, this has been a nursing so there’s a lot of really weird things going in the financial markets we don’t have time to go into them but one of the ones that’s fascinating is I mentioned earlier IPOs are doubling, um yeah so and then just this just recently we had Poshmark go public and do quite well, so I think we’re going to see is, you know and then there’s this weird thing there’s a space vehicle called a spec which is a special purpose acquisition company where you create this shell of a company it has a you raise Capital into it an optional capital and then you say, this thing is a vehicle for going in and buying a company that will effectively go public, so it’s this very kind of weird way to go public through a back door way it used to be very kids today would call its us which is short for suspicious, now it’s become kind of a thing, um so I think they’re going to chew through a lot of the companies like open door that are kind of unicorny and have a lot of Buzz and then I think it’s going to become it’s going to start looking for a new space and I think, you know there’s a lot of Buzz around these DMV bees so I think some of these DMV bees will kind of go public through this mechanism, um so some of them would be like keeps hims hers that the right one and then. [58:54] There’s a bunch in kind of like that category there’s a bunch of beauty I could see glossy a they’ll probably go the traditional route. [59:04] What’s like a tear to too glossy a Kylie’s are they adhere to. Jason: [59:09] I don’t think they would call themselves tier 2 but there I mean there’s a million South Korean health and beauty. Scot: [59:17] Yeah and maybe even like. This could be an exit Vin one of the trends that I’ve been fascinated by but I did make this shot is this there’s these companies buying up, kind of micro brands that are born on Amazon and aggregating them together and forming companies were actually have one on the show soon this could be an interesting exit vehicle for them, so so I think we’re going to see a wave of that e-commerce in 2021 is my. Jason: [59:44] Got it so someone buys up all the foam mattress companies and specs them up got it. Scot: [59:48] Yeah yes pack them up. Jason: [59:50] I like it is that gonna is there any reason that they would clamp down on this backs it feels like they’re they’re like super peeking is that an abuse in some way. Scot: [1:00:01] You’re more government regulation guy that I am I’m sure they’ll think of some reason. Jason: [1:00:09] Gotcha ya know but I mean it doesn’t like just when you sit to a Layman it sounds kind of sketchy right. Scot: [1:00:16] It is a so it’s a way for for more risky companies to make it into the public markets now there’s a school of thought that says there is an investor that you know, that wants more exposure of those things right because you know it would have been great. Jason: [1:00:33] Products cavea. Scot: [1:00:35] Give me a more wide range but then there’s another side of that argument that is you know these these poor kids are on Robin Hood and they saw a firm because they’ve seen it in a check out and they just put you know $500 in there and, if you’re good because it doubled and if some of these. Hot IPOs are specs you know if the crater then that’s going to be a problem there are several there are some so there’s one, Nicola there’s some of the electric car category that have no revenue and just pure speculative and and Dave, they flopped over that could create a wave of Regulation that says. Kind of depends on why we these are going public are they are they going public because they’re sturdy and financially viable and vetted or is it, that they have agreed that they will share their information publicly and it’s up to the investor to take decide what risk them. Jason: [1:01:27] Got it okay and then I think that was five so do you have a bonus. Scot: [1:01:31] I do I think you know I see a lot I watch a lot of CNBC and there’s a fair number of Talking Heads that kind of say, you know once covid zof caught covid on covid off you know once covid off we’re going to see an explosion of people going out and buying new outfits and stuff like that and I don’t think that’s going to happen I think we’re going to see the, the I think we’re going to see this kind of actual, anti-consumerism materialism wave there’s been a little bit of that generational but I think it’s going to be bigger and I think it’s going to be people wanting you know part of its just going to be people spending money on doing stuff there’s so much pent-up demand go to, concerts vacations Leisure stuff whatever whatever whatever that is, but then I think there’s going to be this weird kind of, you know anti-consumerism wave if you will and I think that’s going to really Advantage companies like the real real thread up, a lot of those companies that are in kind of that would you call it second hand or Consignment I don’t know the right. Jason: [1:02:33] Previously owned yeah. Scot: [1:02:34] Previously on gently gently on so I think we’re going to see you know. I don’t think we’re going to see people run out and buy yep six suits so this is, conversely this is bad for the Macy’s the Nordstrom’s and those kind of folks I just don’t think there’s this huge pent-up demand to buy you know fancy cocktail dresses and stuff. [1:02:59] Don’t know how to measure this one that’s why it’s in the bonus category. Jason: [1:03:01] That totally totally fair I am it’s funny you like in briefings I do on covid I do talk a lot about a forthcoming, Roaring 20s that is kind of a backlash too, to the pandemic but I’m with you I think most of that is, spending on services and experiences not Material Goods, so that’s people like you know craving eat out more and go to more wive concerts and events and things like that, then it is you know filling up their closets with clothes so I think you’re right there I for a variety of reasons, the clothes thing is going to going to be, not we’re not going to see a ton of growth in a parallel regardless except for the made-to-order that I predicted. Scot: [1:03:57] And athleisure seems to be resilient. Jason: [1:03:59] So that’ll be that’ll be good in, I think we’ve concluded our predictions but I did get a note from the intern while you were sharing yours that you were exactly right our first prediction show was, January 7th 2016 so this is our sixth sixth prediction show which is. But more fun he sent me your 2016 predictions and one of them you used again this year. Scot: [1:04:31] Really which one. Jason: [1:04:32] So you’re six predictions 2016 will be the year chat Commerce know Amazon will make some big moves in logistics yes jet will get acquired yes, um Google will make a bold move in e-commerce that surprises everyone. Scot: [1:04:50] I didn’t even know it was a retread man. Jason: [1:04:53] I like it and then Ali Baba singles day won’t work in the u.s. yes so you did really well for our inaugural show, and the one that you might not have gone right I didn’t check with how we scored it the what you probably got four out of five and the one you didn’t get right you’re still you’re still Reviving for this year so I love. Scot: [1:05:12] I’m persistent I’ve learned from your persistence on QR codes did you predict QR codes. Okay alright. Jason: [1:05:23] Yeah well Scott it will surprise no one that is happen again and we have blown through our allotted time we thought this would be a shorter show because we didn’t have the the, the year recap in it but we managed to stretch it out to an hour anyway but hopefully it was fun to listen to as much fun as it was for us to make and if you enjoyed it we it’ll of that five star review, especially shout out to all us nerds who have listened to all six versions of the prediction show we’re certainly grateful for your, your support and your continued Allegiance. Scot: [1:06:00] Thanks everyone feel free to let us know your predictions on Twitter I’m Scot Wingo with one t Jason is retailgeek with two e’s in geek and over on LinkedIn we have a page and then on Facebook we look forward to hearing what you think will happen in 2021. Jason: [1:06:19] Until next time happy Commercing.

Welcome to the Join Up Dots Podcast with Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard Subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below: Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed) If you like the show, we would be so grateful if would consider leaving the show a review in iTunes as well as Stitcher Radio.  A couple minutes of your time can help the show immensely!  Thank YOU!   Introducing Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard joins us on the Join Up Dots podcast is the Managing Director/CEO of the Napier Group, a $7M PR and marketing agency for B2B technology companies. He is a self-confessed geek who loves talking about technology. He believes that combining the measurement, accountability, and innovation that he learned as an engineer with a passion for communicating internationally means Napier can help clients achieve their marketing goals sooner. Napier is an agency that brings knowledge, experience, and insight to increase the speed prospects travel through our clients' funnels, generating opportunities more quickly. Napier's unique approach to campaign strategy designs-in speed to campaigns from the outset, building integrated campaigns that focus on the important tactics, whether clients need to increase awareness, generate leads or engage contacts to create opportunities. So why is there such difficulty in today's world, to market their products and services correctly through a sales funnel? And why do people simply forget to build their marketing strategy into everything that they do throughout their business? Well let's find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr Mike Maynard. Show Highlights During the show we discussed such weighty subjects with Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard such as: Why a shop is such a perfect example of how a sales funnel works. Duplicate it and make your profits soar. Why you have to be aware that people rarely buy directly from a website. They need to be nurtured through to a sale. Why solving peoples problems is the key to everything in business. People buy to move themselves from pain. And lastly……… Mike shares the steps we need to take to make a sales funnel work effectively. Gold! How To Connect With Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard Website Instagram Linkedin Twitter Return To The Top Of Mike Maynard If you enjoyed this episode with Mike Maynard, why not check out other inspirational chat with Clayton Morris, Dorie Clark, and the amazing Niall Doherty You can also check our extensive podcast archive by clicking here – enjoy Interview Transcription For Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard David Ralph 0:01 Once upon a time, there was a guy with a dream, a dream to quit his job support himself online and have a kick ass life. Little did he know that dream would lead him into a world of struggle, burnout and debt, until he found the magic ingredient and no struggles became a thing of the past. I of course, was that person. And now My dream is to make things happen for you. Welcome to Join Up Dots. Intro 0:27 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be but somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling in Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. David Ralph 0:52 Yes, hello man. Good morning, everybody. Good morning and welcome to Join Up Dots. Thank you so much for being here is an absolute delight because If he wasn't, then I'd be a very lonely individual. But fortunately I've got another guy on the other end of the line. He's from the United Kingdom should have asked him where he's actually based, but he's got quite a posh voice. He's got quite a posh boys. So I imagine he's probably based in somewhere like heart the chair or Hampshire or something I'm guessing but we will find out. He is a guest who is the Managing Director and CEO of the Napier group as $7 million PR and marketing agency both b2b technology companies. He's also a self confessed geek who loves talking about technology. Now he believes that combining the measurement accountability and innovation, but he learned as an engineer with a passion for communicating internationally means his company Napier can help clients achieve their marketing goals sooner. Now Napier is an agency that brings knowledge, experience and insight to increase the speed prospects travel through our clients panels, generating opportunities more quickly now Napier's unique approach to capture Paint strategy today designs in speed to campaigns from the outset, building integrated campaigns that focus on the important tactics where the clients need to increase awareness, generate leads or engage contacts to create opportunities. So why is there such a difficulty in today's world to market their products and services correctly when there's all this out there for them? And why do people simply forget to build their marketing strategy into everything that they do throughout their business? Well, let's find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr. Mike Maynard. Morning Mike. Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard  2:40 morning David, thank you very much for that intro. That was great. I really enjoyed it and you were you were very nice particular about my accent, David Ralph 2:48 where you are quite posh on yo yo. So I said well, I went with heart for cheer or hemisphere whereabouts are you? Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 2:54 So I'm actually based in Kitchener, Chichester which is on the south coast, but my early years I actually grew up in Essex not a million miles away from where you are so David Ralph 3:05 you're an Essex boy where whereabouts were you from? Sir? Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 3:09 I'm so originally from Buckers Hill. Okay, so that's more Essex into London, isn't it? More Essex into London but I spent some time in my early years you mentioned I was an engineer. I actually worked in Chelmsford, for Marconi, who was an employer. So I know the area very well. David Ralph 3:29 I used to live in Chelmsford, when I was a young scallywag, gallivanting but then my wife came along and she rained me back in my gallivanting days are no more. Now we're with you, Mike. What I want to get straight to is this kind of Mystique. And what I want to do is obviously tap into your expertise on business to business but also bring it more relevant to my audience. Because we hear all the time about sales funnels, you got to have sales funnels, and they're not that hard, are they? I think people are creating them. Have a mystique about it. Well, actually, it's all about understanding your client, understanding your clients need, and building a relationship with them so that they trust you. Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 4:12 I think you're absolutely right there, David. I mean, the interesting thing is, is people talk about sales funnels or, more recently, they start calling them customer journeys. The reality is, is they are actually really simple and really straightforward sort of models of how customers decide to either work with you if you're a consultant or buy your product. And I think you know, that the main thing is just to think about how people approach buying what you're selling, which funnily enough, actually a lot of companies don't do even large companies don't really sit down and think about that they think, you know, one morning someone wakes up, sees an email and that's it, they gonna go buy, you know, a million dollar product, it just doesn't work like that. David Ralph 4:54 Now, I base everything on offline. I always think about everything and older I've kind of developed a coaching side to the business, which wasn't there in the early days, but it is there now. And I always think about a shop because I think a shop is perfect for a sales funnel strategy. You're walking down the high street, you're walking down the mall, you look at a very attractive window and you think, Oh, that's interesting are popping there. And you mosey around for a while. It's it's that kind of logic that has to be brought into the online world as well, isn't it? We've got to look appealing, but we've got to be appealing in a way that makes total sense to our ideal customer. We've got to have that shop window relevant for the right person, and not necessarily every single person that walks past. Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 5:43 It. You're absolutely right. And I think you know, a shop is a is a great model. I mean, people talk about you know, a simple funnel is, you know, sort of a four step process is a really common way people model it so they talk about generating awareness, interest, desire, action and if you think about a sharp, you know, you're not even going to look in the window if you don't really know anything about the shop, you don't think it's relevant you just walk past because there's so many other things on the high street to look at. But, you know, either someone might tell you about the shop or you know, if there's a large chain, you might see adverts or promotions, you know, you don't become aware. So as you walk past you look in the window, you see something in the window that's relevant to you then interested you take a you know, a bit more of a look and maybe wander into the shop, find out a bit more and then you decide you want to buy it and then of course, you know, the shop needs to make sure you actually buy from them. And don't walk out and buy on Amazon. So that's the action stage. So that's a really simple model. It works really well with your example the shop, but it actually works really well with almost every situation. David Ralph 6:48 So as we've nailed this episode already in seven minutes, we're just gonna offer a beer and now it's only was late in the morning but wearing this week we grew up in Essex. That's what we do. So Why are there so many difficulties? Where my Why is so many difficulties where we we've explained it perfectly in seven minutes? Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 7:10 Well, I think the answer is is is, sales funnels are really what I as an engineer will call a model, it's not real life. And so that there's, you know, two potential problems. One is people actually look at and go, I so much more complicated than that I'm gonna really complicate it make it really difficult. And actually know my head's now exploding, I can't really create this funnel that is a good model, because I think, you know, this customer did this and this customer, this and in other customer takes a different approach. And it's absolutely true that people you know, massively over complicate or on the other end, they actually find it you know, really hard even to think about those stages and they just go know, someone who passed up to the window and bought something and that's it and then they try and oversimplify it. So it's finding a model that fits because The truth is, with all these things, particularly in marketing, you're creating something that's kind of your perfect situation or perfect process. And the reality is is no customer actually follows that perfect process. Exactly. They all do something slightly different. So it's very hard to relate that to any individual customer, or potential customer. I think that's why people struggle with sales funnels. David Ralph 8:22 Should I tell you my sales funnel, Mike Sure, I tell you mine and I will blow your business out of the water and everyone will go Why would we go to Napier when? When David has got this? Basically what I do I podcast, that's the awareness. And then people come across to my website. And more often than not, people will email me and I say, Would you like a chat? And thats it really you know, it's not more complicated than that. And I just say, look, I can help you with this. I've got the answers. I've got the solutions. Some people buy, some people don't but I keep it as simple as that. Now about three years ago, I paid for a guy to create a sales funnel because I didn't under band. And I had v things going off the click funnel and things going off here and going off there. And it was triggering this triggering that, and I hated it because I didn't understand actually what was happening. It was like, operating in front of me. So I systematically dismantled it, to sort of find out why this PDF was going here and why these follow up emails were going there. And I thought to myself, ultimately, somebody just wants to have their mind put at rest, but you're fair. And so that's why I got rid of everything. And I always say to people, look, I'm happy to have a chat with you. Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 9:35 And I think that's, that's a great example of of a situation where someone to come in as a consultant, they felt they they had to demonstrate that, you know, they had the knowledge and expertise to help you and they clearly massively overcomplicated the process. And I think it's a great example of where, where, you know, you have a situation where, frankly, the sales funnel was was not really thought through I mean, your sales funnel is, is pretty straightforward, and particularly The moment because, you know, even though the number of people podcasting is growing, you know, incredibly fast. It's still a relatively niche industry. There's not a huge number of consultants, certainly with any credibility offering podcast training like you do, for example. David Ralph 10:14 Now let's take it to Napier. Because Napier obviously does on a much older scale than this. Now, how do you actually create the panel into your business? Because I was looking at your website this morning. And I was actually thinking, Okay, this is an awareness strategy that you've got, but where was the actual funnel built into your website itself? I couldn't really see it. Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 10:39 So the answer is is and I think this this relates very much to what you said, People don't buy PR agencies have a website. It's completely the wrong thing to imagine that you can automate the selling of our services, which you know, can be a significant amount of money just through website, but the sales funnel doesn't exist purely online for us. And I think it's very much the same for you, you talk about having a chat with people. You know, the reality is, is when we're working with a, you know, a large business trying to convince them to, you know, come and work with us. It's not just one chat, it can be several meetings over a period of time. I mean, quite often, you know, we start talking to someone we'd like to work with, and we think we can really help. And it could be a year or two before they actually start doing any business with us. So I think the answer is, again, it comes down to understanding how people buy and what they want. And the reality is is is where we work in marketing. They're buying advice and expertise. And again, very much like you I mean, I think, you know, you say we're different. I think we were very similar. And people are buying expertise. If they're buying expertise, they want to talk to the people who are going to give them that expertise. It's as simple as that. David Ralph 11:52 Right. So so what we I think most people out there, understand the awareness and you've got to get people to know about you now I'm actually at the moment having a 100% social media detox. I've never really been onto social media a lot. But I've been very aware due to sort of personal issues I've gone through, but my happiness levels wasn't at the right level. And I realised a lot of that was comparing my business remember people's businesses and seeing people show highlights and all that kind of stuff. So, so with my awareness, it's very much I podcast, and it comes through to me with your awareness. How do you do that? How is your marketing strategy getting people through other than appearing on people's podcasts? Of course. Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 12:38 Well, this is this is a new thing, the podcast, so I'm really hoping it's going to work. I mean, like everybody in marketing, you know, the real truth is, is that you need to experiment to find out what works. And so we try lots of different things. And the primary way we actually get to work with people is we go meet them, talk to them. Sometimes the Welcome if we can't reach them, because obviously we're working with clients around the world, and then try and keep that conversation going, quite often until they feel there's a need to come and work with us. So quite often, they might be working with a competitor. And to be honest, you know, if that competitor keeps doing a good job, they're not going to switch. So we kind of needs to be the first choice if the competitor makes a mistake, but it is about going out and meeting people. And we do do some other things. We've got quite a lot of content, you know, being a marketing company, I can talk about content marketing. And actually, that drives a lot of our, our new opportunity. So, you know, to take another example, a lot of people in America who are quite hard for us to reach because they're geographically a long way away. They'll go and Google things like, you know, how do I do PR in Europe? And so we've created the answers for that and it's literally answering their questions. If we can answer the question, you know, really early on at that stage. It's quite likely there. Going to come to us and ask us all the questions. And if we keep giving them good answers, then they're going to keep talking to us and eventually become clients. So I think the answer is the answer is that there's lots of different things we do. And you know, the world is changing all the time. So actually, what we're doing is continually experimenting. You know, one interesting thing I can tell you is that Google AdWords absolutely don't work for us. It doesn't matter how much we spend on Google AdWords, we get zero inquiries and get a lot of clicks to the website. I get no business from it. And I don't know why. And we run AdWords campaigns for other clients and they work fabulously well. But for some reason, our business it doesn't work. And I think it's because of this real need to establish a personal connection fairly early on. And AdWords is a little too impersonal. I don't know. I mean, I'd be interested to hear your views. David Ralph 14:50 Well, I am very much against the majority of marketing really, because it doesn't as I say, it doesn't solve the question. People have got a question. Now, one of the things that I use a lot I don't know if you've heard of this Mike is a web site, a site called answer the public.com. and answer the public comm is a free resource to a point you can do about pipe searches. But you put in, say PR marketing, and it will bring all the questions that people are asking online, okay. And so you can really tap in to longtail keywords very accurate, which can then lead people through. Now, I always say to people that I'm working with, let's focus in on the problems. Let's focus in on the solutions. And let's do it when somebody is looking for us. Now I find with Google AdWords, you know, I'm a podcast, trainer. That's part of my being. I'm a business coach as well. Now, I used to say about page two or podcast cost, sorry, and two on page one for podcast. Cool. So if you google podcast course, I'd be pretty much at the top of Google Now there's so many ads appearing, I've dropped to the second page. But because of that, the page seems less relevant somehow. It's almost because we don't click on the ads. Any ads that come along, you've literally jumped down to about three or four down below, even if you google something. And your answer is number one, you rarely ever click on number one on Google is always like three or four. So I think with Google AdWords, I think we're just becoming blinkered, we're just seeing it as you know, perhaps not the right answer. And based on questions, questions, questions, is the way to actually solve that problem. People are searching you. Does that make sense? Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 16:40 I think it's absolutely true. And I actually go back to your comment about arms to the public. were slightly different because we tend to work with large companies and they, they actually probably wouldn't appear on that particular website, but they all have questions. I mean, everyone has questions about how to do the job better. And I think solving people's problems is the Way to win business. And if I look at how we do that, that might be by some of the information we put on the website for someone. And we talked about the sales funnels at the awareness stage and the interest stage, really early on what we call top of the funnel. You know, it's solving people's problems through information, but when we talk about the bottom of the funnel, so when people are actually deciding to buy, you know, I can tell you that pretty much I can predict whether we win a pitch or not. And these pitches though, you know, big presentation, several of us going we spent, you know, days and days trying to work through it. If we can tell the potential clients something they don't know, that helps them with their business. That is the biggest indicator of whether or not we're going to win the business. Yeah. And it's all about, you know, establishing credibility. Now. I get that's different when you're selling, you know, a pure product rather than selling a service. But, you know, I suspect a lot of your listeners are actually selling a service. They're working to help people and it's really all about showing you can help people before their customers is the way to get these, you know, the people you meet to become customers. David Ralph 18:08 Now, this is only like marketplaces. You know, I talked to so many people, one of my strap lines is Jesus didn't have a Facebook account. And everyone's so online, they forget that ultimately, it's about talking to people. And if we take it back to the shop analogy, you go into a shop and if somebody comes over to you straight away and goes, can I help you? When you go no more, I'm away. That's annoying. You don't want but but if a part of that conversation, it's right. It's perfect. And I think that is where a lot of the sales funnels fail as well by jump on you. As soon as you're on the website. They don't allow you breathing space to actually make a decision. You've got to be strategic where your actual doorway to your panel occurs. And I know you know, I haven't got mine, right. I still play around with it. I'm moving on. different pages I take things off. But there's a key to when you actually enter into somebody's thought process, isn't it? Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 19:08 Definitely. And I think it's really interesting. I mean, what you do to try and help people as you do the podcast, and a lot of people who are looking to build a business, whether they using podcasting or not going to listen to Join Up Dots, they're going to get a lot of information that's going to help them from both you and your guests. We have something that that's, you know, much, much simpler, much smaller in scale, but we do I mean, literally, a monthly email newsletter that talks about what's happening to journalists and publications in particular industries, is very focused, it's very niche. If you're not working the industry, it's the most boring thing in the world. But if you're doing marketing in that industry, it's absolutely vital. And you know, I've even had some of our competitors come to me say thank you for the newsletter is great. It really helps us like, we shouldn't really be sending it but it's great. You find it helpful, it's probably a good indication. So I think, I think it's providing that information so people can get a flavour of what it's like working with you is so important to, you know, encouraging people to then start thinking about actually becoming a customer or client. David Ralph 20:15 Now, isn't that interesting that you said that because you know, the fact that you shouldn't be getting that newsletter because you're a competitor. Because ultimately, I think, when we are too insular, and we hold back our business, and we don't prove our worth, even to our competition, ultimately, we hold ourselves back. I've got a guy at the moment in America, but I'm helping him and he's a business where he brings in about a million a year and he wants to take it to 5 million. And I said to him, the only way you're going to do that is actually become the king of your industry. And that is stepping out of side and becoming more and arranging conferences, but you have actually the founder and becoming the centre pointed to it. But he can't see that he still thinks that he's got to hold close to his chest or his secrets. And I say to him, you know, a chef only sells books because he shows you he can cook. So why are we holding back those secrets? And why are we not actually sharing them with our competitors? Because it shows the world but actually, we're bigger than them. We haven't got any issues we can grow because we are willing to give our secrets away. Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 21:29 I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, having having been a both a very geeky and also a bit of a hippie when it came to, you know, online back in the 80s and 90s. And, you know, I really believe in the comment that was made about, you know, in the early days, the Internet Information wants to be free. And I think what people have misunderstood is that comment was not about the price, but it was about information wants to be shared, and today with, you know, what's happening in the world. There. Very few real secrets in business. You know, I can give an example I was working in technical support for a semiconductor company. And we sold into pretty much every single Formula One team. And I put one of our chips, because it was really good for developing engine management systems if you didn't care how much they cost, and you just wanted the best performance you could possibly get. And so anyway, Ford entered, or Cosworth into the the, the Formula One market and they started building engines for Formula One. And a guy from Cosworth phoned me up and he said, Do I have to tell you what I'm calling about? And I said, No, I know exactly which product I'll send you all the information. It's all okay. It's a bit strange. And I've worked for the one supposed to be super secret, and we got this new company who's on the block who actually knows what everyone else is using. And then two years later, BMW came into Formula One, and I got almost exactly the same So, you know, it's really interesting that people imagine what they've got is some secret sauce. It's actually not really about secrets. It's about people who are prepared to put the work in and actually do. But the secret says, whether it's something you do or a product or you know anything else, it's about really, you know, executing what you're supposed to do, rather than just having this magical knowledge that no one else knows. Because, trust me a lot more people know what you think is secret than, than you'd ever imagined. David Ralph 23:28 Yeah, I agree with that. 100%. And if you take the sales funnel, we're going to get back into the sales funnel. One of the things I say to people is, generally, people are lazy. That's the first thing you've got to realise that people want to transformation. They want to go from A to B as easily as possible. Now, but in many ways is your secret sauce. Actual ingredient. That is actually what people want. They don't want all the technical stuff and they're bored Barber, all they want to do is go How can I go from here? So here in three weeks instead of trying to do it off of YouTube videos in three years, right, that's the key to it, isn't it? So on my business I at the throne, I always say, I can't even remember what it is. Now I've gone totally blank, but some of the longer we get you success without the stress, because I totally believe a lot of what we do is easy if we know what we're aiming for. We know where those people are, and we give them what they want. Simple as that. Would you agree? Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 24:30 I think you should be interviewing you about sales funnels, you clearly have an awful lot. And I'm going to be honest, I think one of the reasons people have stopped talking so much about sales funnels, and they start referring to it as a customer journey is, to me the funnel is a it's really the wrong way to think of things because it kind of envisages that you've got this, this person, this potential customer who kind of fall through all these levels and they're doing the falling and all you've got to do is provide the right things at the right time. will magically happen. And I think again, that's one of the mistakes people make with sales funnels, the reality is, is that actually the customers have steps they need to take before they're going to spend money with you. And you need to help them along the way. And I love the idea of a journey rather than a folder, but basically the same thing. But to me, it's all about helping and guiding the customer on the journey, rather than being a bit more passive sitting back and just waiting for them to fall through the funnel. David Ralph 25:26 Now, can you have too few steps? Okay. And can you I know you can have too many steps, but can you have too few? Sales Funnel Expert Mike Maynard 25:34 Absolutely. You know, so, the one thing to say is, although the structure of the funnel is very similar, and most pe

In this episode of Leafy Podcast, our hosts sit down with John Vuong. John founded Local SEO Search, where he helps small business owners grow and succeed, giving them a leg-up to compete with more established companies in SEO and being seen on the internet. John also has a podcast Local SEO Today, a tool for business owners and entrepreneurs to help them succeed. John tells us that understanding how Google works and being aware of what customers want and are looking for is how he begins with his customers. He tells us that to start, focus on running a business, the foundational components to operating a successful business and SEO and advertising on the internet is a secondary concern after creating a solid company.   John explains how to utilize certain online platforms for advertising by understanding the mode of communication and the purpose of each platform (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) , understanding what’s going on with the users and capitalizing on what is available.  John believes life is short, so embrace it and take on the adventure. You can run a business the way you want and do it well so that you can spend time with family and friends, which is what really matters. To learn more about John Vuong, visit: localseosearch.ca Episode Transcript: Female Announcer  0:00  Welcome to the leafy podcast, helping real estate investors and entrepreneurs grow. Say hello to your hosts, Jennifer Gilgoric and Brian price founders of Leafy Legal Services,teaching you how to protect your assets for your business and manage your wealth. Let's start the show. Tammy Geerling  0:18  Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Leafy Show. Thank you so much for being with us today. I'm Tammy, the podcast manager. And on the line we have our awesome hosts both Brian Price and Jennifer Gilgoric from Leafy Legal Services. Brian is the CEO of that service and Jennifer is the COO. They have another awesome guests for us today. So let me pass it on to them so that they can get the show started for us. Hey, Jennifer, hey, Brian. How are you guys doing?  Brain Price  0:44  Good, good.  Jennifer Gilgroic  0:45  Great. Great. I'm very excited to be here today. So today's guest has a really awesome backstory. And so his life has been this incredible journey. His parents were Vietnamese immigrants to Canada and then through his life. He as he went, he got a paper route. So he's always been an entrepreneur. So even as young, he had a job, he was an entrepreneur, he went on a paper route. Then he ended up doing finance classes there at the university in London on it, Ontario. So that's still Canada. Then he ends up going to England. Then he comes back to Canada gets involved with yellow pages and red pages, actually, which was a startup that was going to compete and they were going to do an actual written, they're going to print out website addresses, just like you had for the phone book. So yeah, this was back in the day. So it's like so cool. And then he managed to move that forward and move that forward. And now he's an SEO expert. So I want us to give a huge round of applause and welcome John Vuong to our show. And he's with local SEO H O Seo search.ca. So welcome, John. I just love your story. John Vuong  1:57  Thanks a lot, Jennifer. Yeah, that was a great Intro. Yeah, it's been a journey for sure. And I'm excited to share some insights along the way. Unknown Speaker  2:07  Yeah. So how did you kind of get through this? You know, going through these different avenues? How did you finally settle on SEO? And and once you walk us through us and I like to hear more about these red pages, I think that's pretty interesting. John Vuong  2:21  Yeah, definitely. So seven years ago, I started this agency, local SEO search. I had no clue about anything technical. So I'm not an SEO background expert by any means. I started my career actually in sales in advertising sales. And I studied business finance, so it was kind of different. But in order for me to get a real job, that was my first job, and I stuck with it, and over the course of many years, I refined my art of sales and marketing. And I got to really understand what my strengths are what I enjoy doing, and Yellow Pages where I was there for five years. The relationships is what really connected me with local business owners, and really wanting to help them grow and stand out because they were genuinely interested in the community, right, like real people supporting real community leaders, right, like computer people. But even before that read pages, so that was my first job actually, outside of university. It was the, it was a great concept. It was competing with the yellow pages. First directory ever going to every single business home office tower, but printed every website, so it was competing with Google, but Google wasn't like taking off at that time yet. Right? So it was called read to and it also came out with a directory read Toronto, but it didn't last it didn't survive. It was a great concept. So I sold a bunch of it because I was a true believer in it. But it just didn't. survive. Jennifer Gilgroic  4:01  I think it's an absolute scream that you are in finance and that you went into finances school, but you end up in sales and you're like a total sales he kind of, hey, let's talk because usually finance people are like, hey, let's not talk so I can like do this right here with these numbers that I love. And you're like completely opposite of that. So I always love it when the journey switches in in changes, and and that relationships are so important. And it is weird when we look back that there was a day before Google, you know that you had these books and everything like that. I have a house that's over 100 years old, and my son we we were we it still has stuff in it from the the lady who had owned it her entire life. She was like literally in her 90s when I bought that. I think it's always been like their house, you know? And we found the old rotary phones. And I was like, show me how you would make a call. You know when we found them and he was like, I had no idea Like whatsoever, and then he was like, so you had to do that for every single number. And I was like, yeah. And if you got the wrong number, you have to start all over again. He was like, wow, this is fascinating, fascinating to him. So it was really cool. So tell me a little bit about how you went from the Yellow Pages. You're doing all this relationship, marketing and relationship sales, because people you know, the biggest part, if you're in advertising sales is not just to sell one ad, you want the people to constantly, you know, be re re upping their subscriptions. And that's part of your compensation, with many advertising sales. It's why some advertising sales reps make really good money. They're good at keeping their people, you know, they're always checking in with them, you know, so tell us a little bit how you went from that in and where you're at now. John Vuong  5:50  Yeah, so at Yellow Pages, so I was there for five years and relationship sales was more of a I don't know Like, I was genuine, I was really like just authentic raw. So I always had a story. And where I was just letting people in on like my journey, right? Like, what I grew up doing, how I discovered like traveling like I love. I had a exchange experience, like going to school in London, England for a year. And I was amazing. For me that really opened up a lot of opportunity for me to see what's bigger and greater than just my local community of working in a small suburb of Toronto, right? That's where I grew up. So for me, it was more about like, just connecting with people and letting them in. And yes, I was able to not just renew people, but upsell, and then of course, it was all about listening to them asking the right questions and finding out what their true needs and desires were right because ultimately, a lot of people were frustrated. They were getting spending more money than ever but not getting the same sort of return. They used to get 10 1520 years ago. And when I hear that all the time, I'm like, so what is going on? Where are people shopping? How are they pivoting? Like, what is the user behavior, right? And as you know, the internet started to take off, Google started becoming more present. Email started to be the main mode of communication, no longer fax machines, no longer telephones, text messaging, like all these new innovative stuff that you hear today, like social media and content, video content, audio, all that is all new within the last 10 years, right. But before that, it was still traditional media, which was newspapers, flyers, magazines, trade shows, billboards, Radio Television, right. But today, it's now podcast, YouTube videos. There's Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, you name it, right? Like there's so many other new initiatives. that technology has allowed users to change their behavior. Being controlling in a different platform in different way, at their convenience, right? So it's just different. But there's still a lot of people consuming information. And you have to understand the users behavior to then gravitate on what is important for business owners. And that's where I shifted, because a lot of people were just frustrated spending so much money and didn't see a good return.  Jennifer Gilgroic  8:24  It's very frustrating because it's changed so quickly, you know, it was like 100 years ago, it was still well, we have this directory and local and you go to this guy, and he puts up a little sign, you know, and that's how it was for like, ever. And when I say forever generations, yes, just in our lifetime. It's been you know, going from paper to then television and now you have radio now you have internet now the internet's completely changed and you have this is like weariness to have to as soon as like every other year, there is some new hotness and what Did you know six months ago isn't the same? And I think that there's a lot of business owners, but also people who are frustrated, where do I go to get really what I need? And and oh, now I've got to learn a new app. It's just crazy. So it's amazing that you're on the on the edge of that. How do you not get tech weary? I mean, there's a lot that's in your head. Do you just dump it out as you are constantly knowing new stuff? John Vuong  9:28  Yeah, so I specialized now just on SEO because it's already fairly complex. Digital advertising comprises of email, social content creation in various forms. And then understanding like, what these different apps and software and technology can actually do for a business, right like to either scale and understand the process and efficiencies of it. So you have to really just focus on what you do best. And I continue doing that which is building relationships, meaningful ones with business owners that are I'm trying to help them grow and build a digital presence, right. And what we do is focus just on SEO, because I feel it being very similar to what Yellow Pages provided, which is the organic, natural listings on Google where the businesses are not pushing stuff at you, right? That's advertising, you know, trying to disrupt that user behavior to get someone to either click or call you at that given moment with a creative ad, right. But when you're appearing organically or naturally, someone else is seeking you out. So you're pulling people when and during control. And that's what Yellow Pages provide. So that was more directive advertising versus Creative Advertising. And that's why I feel SEO is still the dominant player for that same sort of medium that people used to spend a lot of money and yellow pages with. Unknown Speaker  10:53  Yeah, that's an interesting way of putting it because yeah, I mean, it is it is kind of like the new Yellow Pages is but You have to kind of put yourself out there and find different ways of attracting people. It's not like in one, one book. So how are you helping people to get in front of more people to get to those those folks that are that are searching for you. John Vuong  11:15  So understanding how Google works is very important. And I feel people overcomplicate things. I always tell people like run a really good business. What I mean by that is, take care of your customers, listen to them, provide an amazing product or service. Understand that value prop what unique selling proposition you're offering, like, understand foundationally what makes a really good business because over the course of many years, I've worked with thousands of business owners that operated for generations without technology. So imagine how did they survive? they relied on referrals and word of mouth, right and minimal advertising on maybe yellow pages or print media or flyers. Whatever may be right, so right, how did they survive? And what has dif different right? Like, the challenges? There's a lot going on today technology has advanced so quickly in the last five or 10 years that people are bombarded with this new app, this new software, this new social media feed, and they're looking for quick solutions, fast ways to expedite to make that hundred thousand dollars in a week because they saw an ad there, right? And they forget that well, maybe one in a million person actually receive that benefit. Everyone else is gonna lose a lot of money and get stressed and frustrated. So why not you do what everyone else used to do, which is grind it out, understand how to run a business and focus on the foundations right? So that's what I always boil things down to like SEO can really help advance a business Once they already know how to take care of the customer, and run a good business, but we cannot help someone that doesn't even know how to run a business because their reputations on the line, there's a lot of other foundational things that are missing. Jennifer Gilgroic  13:13  Yeah, well, that's kind of what we do we do the foundational things on the back end structure so that they don't take themselves before they even get started, because everybody wants to sales come in. But there's a lot of other things you have to put in place in order for that to happen. So I get that. And I'm gonna ask you a question. You know, you were all heavy Google, Google Google. But right now, you know, like, as the time we're taping this, Google and Facebook and Amazon are all in this, like, antitrust. People are willing to break them up. I mean, you know, Google is the Yellow Pages, but it is the everything. It's like the new source. It's like the thing. So do you. Do you think now like, Are you already building your plan for what if they break it up? Like what if they actually split up Google and now People have other products that they can do, you know, there's brave, there's DuckDuckGo there's all these other search engines, you know, Yahoo used to be the search engine. But But now I think Yahoo doesn't that piggyback off of Google Now. They're all like together. But do you have a plan? Like how do you think it's gonna go now that there is so much heat on these these mega monopolies? Which, you know, in my opinion, they all need to be broken up. But you know, I'm, that's just my opinion. But yeah. John Vuong  14:33  So, like every generation, always look at where people the users are going to gravitate towards. So understanding what what channel or what purpose Facebook has, right, like, Who do they target and what's the sole purpose when you go to Facebook? What's the sole person is when you go to LinkedIn or Twitter, right understanding that mode of communication and that platform and medium of choice. So think about zoom and Eventbrite and all those online platforms where you can now do presentations since the pandemic, it's really been elevated, where people are now spending more time in front of a computer pitching and doing a lot more conferences that way. So it's just understanding what's going on, right in terms of the users. And if Google is still and yes, Google's always pivoting, they're trying to find ways to monetize. They're trying to own the real estate, trying to alleviate and not get business owners who are ranking users to click on their website, they will either click on Google's properties right around the SERPs, because that's your prime real estate. They make money through ads, right and retargeted ads, I get it. So you have to understand the whole purpose of the medium. And then how do you capitalize on what's available? Right, right. And I still feel SEO is very powerful, because you can control and position yourself and optimize as that local player. On the map below, right? Because that's still free at this time, but you also have to be weary of what's going on. Right? Because same with Facebook. You know, before, once upon a time a couple years ago, you could organically get position, right? But today, every two times every time you scroll down, there's an ad that appears, right? There's always pushing stuff at you. And it's more like, you're bombarded with stuff that you don't really want to, you know, be there for right like, yeah, so you have to understand the channel and the different media's out there and understand what's going on within and I still feel Google is great, like duck, duck go. It's not like in terms of use.  Jennifer Gilgroic  16:45  Yeah, I mean.  John Vuong  16:45  1%. Jennifer Gilgroic  16:46  Put that on every single phone. You see, when you have an agreement that every single phone that comes out, it has to have your voice. Brain Price  16:54  if you own the operating system. Jennifer Gilgroic  16:57  Now it's like you can't infer some people. They do all their work. I mean, I know people who literally work off their phones now, you know, the phones are more expensive in some cases than computers, which is nuts. Right? But you do everything you're doing your banking your you have your password keepers, you've got all your things on your phone. And so, yeah, I mean, it's crazy to have it so embedded like Facebook, I mean, there's entire things you cannot do unless you have a Facebook account where you can log in, that are totally unrelated to Facebook. Right? So it's just interesting because there's so much interconnectivity, it can be confusing for people. Yeah, very much so to compete, you know, but that's good. I really love the fact that you still believe in your in this every single day that you can still use it for local people, because that means that local businesses still have a chance to get the people around them for free. And they have ways that they can utilize this technology. So that actually warms my Heart, a whole bunch for that. John Vuong  18:03  Understanding the space, right? Like it's always evolving, but looking for opportunities to capitalize because people get frustrated, spending too much money not getting good returns. So I want to help the little guys. Unknown Speaker  18:15  Yeah. So are there certain things that you always do know? You know, I know things change for hours, there's kind of some basis that you actually do and maybe some of the new stuff that you're looking into as well. John Vuong  18:26  Yeah. So for us, we always look at foundational stuff like understand your client, creating a content journey mapping, and really positioning yourself as the expert, right. So understanding who your ideal persona client is, and writing every piece of content, your website piece is directly driven to those type of people, right, from everything you produce. From video, podcasts, audio, you know, images or written depending on where they're at in terms of the journey, create that content piece for them, and then making sure that You're up to date in terms of like, what's going on what the users want, like they want fast, secure, easy to use navigation. Like, all these things are now behavior. If you don't have it, someone else is gonna, you're probably losing out right on an alternative because they're bouncing off your page to someone else. Right? So just staying current and what's going on, right? Because technology's moving so fast. And as much as you want to stay on top of it. It's kind of scary too, because there's so much going on, right? Like AI. What's going on there? Like they know too much about you already. Right? Is that Jennifer Gilgroic  19:40  right? Yes. I'm like terrified like I can have a conversation with a friend of mine. And then immediately I'll go on, you know, to look at something and ads for that pickup. And I'm like, How did my phone know I was, you know, talking to somebody you know that. Maybe it's time to get hair extensions. My entire timeline is nothing but a hair extension company. Whatever but yeah, yeah, it's weird man. I don't like it. I'm like stay in as much as I say that. I still have an Alexa. So if I  Brain Price  20:12  Don't say it.  Jennifer Gilgroic  20:16  Oh, yeah, people used to be what was that joke? They used to say, you know, don't say that over the telephone because you never know if the CIA is listening, and then it says 2020 CIA, how do I bake a pie? Like that coming back to? That's cool. Well, so Okay, so what else can you tell people? Right now if they have their own, like website and stuff like that? Is there anything anyone can do besides writing things in the in the tone of the voice for your target client? Like taking it down from I just want to tell everybody in the whole wide world to really knowing who your ideal client is, it's very important. Is there anything else that you can give us on on top of that? John Vuong  20:58  Yeah, so I focused On a lot of service based small, medium sized business owners, like the local dentist or plumber or lawyer or whatnot, Google My Business is a great opportunity. If you haven't verified it, optimize it, make sure you're in the right category, put in all the services that you offer, update it once a week, get good reviews onto the Google My Business Page, because people are checking you out before they call you. And they know so much before they even reach out to you. That's scary, right? They know, they checked out you on LinkedIn, they check out your reviews, case studies, Chapter all your blogs to see if you're credible, right. So as much as you want to put out information, make sure it's consistent along the lines, don't, you know, say one thing and do something else the other channel right? So it's more important than ever to make sure all your assets and all the properties that you own online is consistent has the same tone of voice and has the same good, you know? Good feel authentic feel rawness, right, because end of the day people are gonna check you all. And if Jennifer Gilgroic  22:11  I actually have a really good local thing, so I had a marketing company and I used to help people do this and there was an assisted living facility here in our town, and they did not go out and grab what you say their their property. So when he says that if for anyone who doesn't know what that means, it means like, go to your Yelp and claim your business claim your business on Google, there's actually a little thing when you you put it up, is this your business? You want to claim it because somebody else can claim it. So they had a Facebook page that actually wasn't theirs. It was a it was a well meaning former staff, and so nothing had been updated on it. And there were some like comments that weren't that great, but their Google business showed had a set of pictures, the first pictures that came up That had someone had made a cut is disgusting, but they had messed their bed. That's all I'm gonna say that it was very graphic. And that is the picture that came up for now this is one of the cleanest, nicest facilities. And that picture wasn't even of their facility. Because the flooring was they didn't have that flooring anywhere in any of their rooms. But that was the picture that pulled up. And it was actually a process to pull that listing away, and a verification from the person who had claimed it, who was a competitor of a very small unit to do it. So people wouldn't go to this very large one. I mean, they had hundreds of rooms, a skilled nursing or whatever. And they're like, how can businesses just dropped and we're not getting calls. We're not getting this? Well, as soon as I help them clean that up a little bit just because I knew enough to do that. I'm not an expert like john, who could have probably really maximized that all of a sudden, the phones started ringing. They started getting more residents again, because that false information wasn't out there. So you do want to do that not just for SEO, but also to protect the name and good reputation of your business. So add that to that. Yeah. So I didn't mean to hijack you there. I just had an actual thing I knew about what you were saying worked. Well, we've been talking to john Vong. Am I saying that correctly? I should, yes. Okay. Great. And he's with local SEO search.ca because he's Canadian. Right. So local SEO search.ca. And we're getting to almost getting close to the end. So Brain, did you have any? Some questions? Still? Yeah. Unknown Speaker  24:46  Well, I think that I noticed on your site, you have a free site audit. So why don't you tell us about how what that includes and how people can get and you know, get theirs, their site audited and how you can help? John Vuong  24:58  Yeah, so what we've been trying to do is give and help as many small medium sized businesses as possible. So usually with that someone inputs her website, usually it's a real business that's been in business for a while that is frustrated and need some more of a digital presence, right? Because we need to benchmark you, we need to figure out how we can help. And so we we kind of do a console, a phone conversation first, to see where you're at what you've done, and kind of analyze how we can help. Right? Yeah, because not only do we bring an SEO background and console, we actually go in a little bit deeper because of our business experience. Myself, yes, I have 10 plus years in sales and marketing working with thousands of businesses, but my VP of sales have worked with over you know, a couple thousand clients as well, but he was at Yellow Pages for 35 years. So his experience his insights in how to run a good Business is invaluable for a lot of business owners that are just starting, right. So we try to just help as much as possible. And that's what differentiates us from a lot of other competitors. Brain Price  26:11  Cool. Jennifer Gilgroic  26:12  Yeah, experience like that is really invaluable, especially when they've you've guys have seen it all. And really the best advertising is a good business. You know, you do what you say you're going to do, and you make people happy. And they tell their friends and I know there's the old adage, well, if they're unhappy, they'll tell everybody if they're happy, they're not gonna say word, but that's just being bitter. That's actually not true. People do talk about good experiences, and they do recommend, and even on Facebook, you have local here in Galveston, we have this Galveston is called Galveston gossip or something like that. There's like 60,000 people on it, and people gossip and they talk and they take pictures of things. And they even give shout outs but they also ask questions. Hey, guys, who do you know who can fix this? Or Who's your landscaper? My guys, not doing it anymore. I see that a lot. And people refer to that all the time. And that's just my little town. So you know, there's there's just running a good business and being good people will talk, they will talk and send you stuff. It's which is this. John Vuong  27:15  These are great forums and groups because once you are known and reputable, it's all about like cultivating more opportunity, right? So just do good end of the day, eventually things will come to you and be honest about it. Right? Like don't don't try to you know, do a fast one on people right? Or, you know me like they're so Jennifer Gilgroic  27:38  Basic but yeah. You're right. Don't pull a fast one on me but there's so much click and bead and there's so many people on social just trying to make it or hustle or whatever it is. Yeah, but are they real business owners like really? If you look at any athlete, pro athlete or any successful singer, they don't tell you what they've been doing for the last 20 years. yours. You see them at the pinnacle. So it's the same bit entrepreneurship like, no one sees me doing what I did for the last 20 years. They only see me at now. Right? But how many years of you know the grit and wrongness of hustling and door knocking cold calling and all those other things? sleepless nights and not paying for food? Like all these things, no one sees that, right?  Brain Price  28:26  Yeah, absolutely. Jennifer Gilgroic  28:29  Okay, so, as Connect, I'm going to set one more question before Tammy has to take us away but as Canadian who had to live in England, I want you to tell me what English food does there any English food that you particularly liked? Because, you know, back in the day, England was not known for its food. So I'm curious as what a Vietnamese Canadian living in England like for his food. I know that's off topic, but I just have to ask you. John Vuong  28:55  Know, I still love the chips there, which is fine. Yeah, but they were really greasy. They were like dripped in, you know, after you go to the local pub and uh huh. No, no. I mean, it was great. But because I was drunk, maybe but Jennifer Gilgroic  29:14  Man, you can't you can't beat it. Well, that's awesome. Well guys we've been talking to john von john is with local SEO search.ca. If you're a small or medium sized business owner and you're just racking your head, trying to figure out how to cut through the noise and increase your exposure, but you know, in the way that you need to get in more clients that you can take great care of, then go and see him at local SEO search.ca. And Tammy is going to give you more information about us. Thank you so much, John, for being on the show. It was just great Convo.  Brain Price  29:48  Thanks. I appreciate it  John Vuong  29:49  Thanks a lot Brian and Jennifer. Thank you. Tammy Geerling  29:51  Yeah, thank you, John. And thank you, Brian and Jennifer for hosting today. And we will have all of John's links in our show notes. And you can find us at leafy legal we are across all social media platforms and also podcast platforms. So thank you again so much for listening today. Hope you have a wonderful day and we will see you next time. Bye. Male Announcer  30:22  Attention real estate investors and entrepreneurs. Did you know that real estate investors are a primary target for lawsuits according to the National Survey of the court data 25% of Americans risk being sued in their lifetime. However, if you are a real estate investor, you have a 95% chance of being sued in the next 20 years. Leafy Legal Services helps you protect your assets and strategically grow your business and wealth LiFi legal services our experts at the series LLC and Delaware statutory trust to have the newest and most ideal legal structures for real estate investors leaving legal services at the most personalized and affordable solutions for setting up LLCs property owners are always at risk when it comes to their assets. anonymity is so important. If you own just a rental house and you own your home, you have to protect yourself and your properties from any potential legal issues. Leafy Legal Services have the right solutions to make sure you are happy and feel secure or they offer cost effective documentation that suits their client's needs for a free consultation and ebook visit levy legal services.com They are waiting to hear from you Leafy Legal Services.com. Female Announcer  31:35  Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Don't wait take action now. LiFi legal services calm protect your assets grow your business and manage your wealth.

Shut down your search on DR Google NOW, we have all YOUR medical questions answered with DR Preeya Alexander (The Wholesome Doctor) WE COVER EVERYTHING from "Why does my baby grunt" to why sex shouldn't hurt post birth. Skin care Teething Baby poo  Nappy rash Baby brain Cleaning foreskin on boys  Postpartum hairloss Anxiety Choking and starting solids Sunscreen on newborns Heidi spent many days and nights googling all of this stuff, today Dr Preeya answered it all, sometimes you just need reassurance as a new parent that this is normal.     See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

Welcome!   This has been a busy week in the world of technology.  We are going to hit several topics today. From Employer device privacy, dangers of huge facial recognition databases, Marriott enters the home rental market, overblown results on dangers of screen technology, big tech stomping on small tech, smart home alarms, and cable companies, Apple stands ground on iPhone encryption, and Microsoft ends support of Windows 7. It is going to be a busy show -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com I've got some free online privacy training coming up. I have been teaching courses on security for the FBI InfraGard's program. And now I'll share some of the step-by-step tips and tricks that we all can use to keep ourselves and our information safe online. And it won't cost you a dime. --- Related Articles: What Does Your Employer Know About Your Daily Activities Privacy Gone: Tech Start-up Has Huge Facial Recognition Database If You Can’t Beat ‘Em - Join ‘Em says Marriott Screen Time Causing Mental Health Issues Are Overblown Big Tech Stomps All Over Small Businesses Home Security and Alarm Systems Useless After Charter Cable  Pulls Plug Security First, Apple Stands Ground on iPhone Encryption No Security for Windows 7 After Today --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Hey, it's my intro music. Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome, welcome. Hopefully, you've been able to join me before. We talk a lot about technology and of course a lot about privacy and security. Technology today is all about privacy and security. Isn't it? It just seems like every time we turn around, and there's some other business out there just trying to get our information or even worse, some hacker who's trying to get it from us. So I try and help everybody understand what is going on what is privacy? What's it all about? I give a lot of tips and tricks on things and recommendations. I do a whole lot of different pieces of training, free training, pop up stuff, Facebook, and YouTube lives. I'm trying to get the word out. So I appreciate everybody that shares this. We've had an increase every week, with people subscribing to the podcast, which is excellent! You're listening to me here on the radio, and who are spreading the word. You know, there again, there's so much information out there, it's hard to know what you should believe. There are all kinds of motivations behind it. So hey, what's my motivation? Well, I'm trying to get the word out, I know that probably 90% of you wouldn't ever be a client of mine. And that's just fine. Because hopefully, the 5% that would be a client of mine will become a client, and we can help them out. But I want to get this information out. Sorry, I don't hold anything back. You've probably noticed it if you're one of those people who learned about the show or the podcast so that you now know about it, and you heard it from a friend, and the friend said, Yeah, you have to listen to Craig. You probably had an earful from somebody telling you about how I am just giving away the store. And that's my Go, hey, if I'm not giving you the store, let me know if you have any questions, let me know. It is just "me" at Craig Peterson dot com. Now, many of you may have noticed if you're on my mailing list, that we changed the format of the newsletter starting this last week. Right? It was one of those January 1 promises that we had hoped to get it up by the first of the year, and it took us a couple of extra weeks is not always the case. But then here's the new format for the weekly newsletter, if there is any real critical security stuff, updates patches that you need to apply in your business or your home. Those are now going right at the top of the newsletter. This last week, I think we had about ten a dozen or so of these very high priority security patches that required immediate patching. And we went so far as to give you links right there in my newsletter, so you can click on the links to those CVEs we're giving you a link so that you know what the critical vulnerabilities are. It tells you even what to do what software it is everything right, step by step. That's the name of my game. You can use all of that now to stay one step ahead of the bad guys one step ahead of the crackers. That's the whole idea, right? The bad guys out there trying to crack into your computers. Now, we also had two other sections. I'm not going to be able to this week, I, you know, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. But one of the sections was my weekly podcasts broadcast in the video. So I gave you links in the newsletter last week to the YouTube videos. So you can see articles that I'm talking about it has captions so you can read along if you wanted to watch it there. And I also posted them up on Facebook. The last one for last week's show would have gone out on Friday. So Yesterday, you should have gotten that one if you're a Facebook follower. So please do follow please do subscribe. I'm, I'm I don't know that I'll be able to get much help this week because we've got something huge happening. I am trying to help people here with some of the privacy stuff. So I am going to be we're putting together right now. And I'm going to be giving away a step by step guide for you to be able to protect your privacy online through tracking. Now you know about ads online, right. And ad revenue, I think, is essential for businesses. You need to be able to show ads to get attention, right? There are so many competitors out there and so many different spaces. So how can you get your message out if you can't advertise? So there was a trend for a while to have ad blockers. Ad-blockers are more than a bit of a problem now, because how does the publisher generate any revenue when they can't sell ads. And I saw a fascinating statistic that got me going this week. Have you seen where ads directed at users of iOS, which is Apple's mobile operating system that users of Apple's iOS are using Safari, advertising to them is worth less than it is to Android? Now think about that for a minute. Why is it cost more now to send to Android users than Apple users? Well, Apple integrated some new anti-tracking technology into Safari. That is a very, very big deal, because now with that anti-tracking, technology, and Safari, the advertisers Cannot track you and other sites that you're online. So the fact that can't track you means they don't know as much about you, which means you're not worth as much from an advertiser standpoint. Now, you could argue either way, right? In my business, we do some advertising. However, mostly it is word of mouth, and that's what we've done for decades now. And word of mouth works, right? Because people know me that I helped out their business and kind of, I'm, we need some help. We need some security stuff. We need a cyber assessment, you know, how good is this? Am I covering everything? Right? So that's how I usually do it. But most businesses are having to do it via advertising. I'm thinking about doing some advertising in the future for some of the products I've put together. Apple is stopping them from tracking you when you go to multiple sites. What would it be like, if I told you how to go about blocking advertisers from tracking you going to multiple sites on your computer as well. So that's what I'm putting together. Right now we're putting together a step by step guide that we're going to be giving away. It's part of a training webinar we're going to be doing as well, that is going to teach you a lot about some of the privacy stuff that you can do. And that's coming up here in a couple of weeks. So make sure you're on my email list at, Of course, Craig Peterson, calm slash subscribe, because you'll be able to get all of that and it's free. Again, I don't hold anything back to people. I'm not some guy who doesn't know what he's talking about and just has to market sell, sell, sell. I am trying to help out here. Okay, so make sure you are on that email list. Just go ahead and go to Craig Peterson, calm slash subscribe, and all it asks for is your name and email address. And then you're going to get this new newsletter I'm doing. So the second portion of the newsletter is the top four videos that I did that week. So these are the ones that people watch the most. And I know a lot of you don't watch the video. All of the articles I discuss are in the newsletter in the third section. So that's what we're doing now. And that's based on feedback that we've had from all you guys, and I appreciate it. We got some super fans out there that email me and pretty much every week. Some people send me Facebook stuff and LinkedIn stuff, which is cool as well to see some of that. I have to warn you I will answer or someone, not me, will answer as a member of my team. And it might take a little while okay because I get thousands of emails a day, and I have some very heavy mail filtration in place. Now the excellent news is that mail filter tends to work extremely well and tends not to block legitimate emails. But the operative word there is, usually. At any rate, I still get hundreds to have to go through every day of legitimate ones, and I try and respond so if you do send an email to me that's just me at Craig Peterson calm, make sure the chat a little bit of patience and we'll we will get back to you. If it's urgent, you can always try and text me as well because, you know, I had this contact from a law firm, and they had to get some briefs filed with the court by 4 pm. And it was like 1:30 in the afternoon, and they reached out to me, a Windows machine decided to die, and we can't get him to come back. So you know, I do get those types of emergency things, but email is probably not the best way to do that. The best way to do that is probably via texting Me? Well, that's the new newsletter. We also use the newsletter to announce special pieces of training. Karen, my wife, and I have been working on a special webinar for about a week or two. And we've got another week or so hours worth of work in it. So you know how this goes, right? I said I would have just said to myself, I didn't promise you, but I would have a new newsletter out the first of the year, and it took until the middle of a month. So I guess that's not too bad, right, two weeks-ish to get that out. So you know, we'll see what happens with this webinar. But it should be on time. But if you're on the mailing list, you'll know about it. Just Craig peterson.com slash subscribe. Something else important. I don't want people to use my mailing lists to spam other people. So what I do is I do something so that when you subscribe, it's going to send you an email, and I noticed there had been 100 people who subscribed, and I sent them an email. They have to click on the link. That's to confirm that this is their email that it's not somebody else who's messing around. That's trying to send them spam from the right. So I'm going to have to reach out to those hundred people individually. But if you subscribe, make sure you check your email box, he's I'll send it from my email address for me at Craig peterson.com. Look for that link, click on that link. Then you'll be able to get that that the weekly emails from me and notices about what's coming up. I typically remind you in advance about one of these pieces of training, and I'll remind you like a couple of days before, I just don't want you to miss them, but I don't get kind of asked him like some other people do no question. And we don't do these very often. My big courses and training are only really once a year. Hey, you're listening to Craig Peters on WGAN stick around because we're going to get right into it when we get back Hi, everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome back, WGAN and online, of course, over at Craig Peterson dot com. Hey, did you know that your employer monitors you? Well, you may have known that. We're going to get into a little about what some employers are doing and also why some businesses are tracking. And when it comes to employers, of course, and some of the trackings, we're talking about still legal stuff. And when it comes to some of the big box retailers, it's still legal as well. So I guess the big question is, should it be, and what are they looking into? What are they gleaning from it, and why would they be doing it? Let's get down to that, and I'll give you a couple of tips to help you protect yourself. The Wall Street Journal this week, had a great article That was talking about, well, it was illustrating that was a kind of a cool way they did this thing. But it was talking about this guy who they named Chet. And, you know, Chet, kind of an old name, which is kind of funny, because we're always talking about it this week on the radio. When was the last time you met somebody named Chet? And for me, it's probably been 30 years, maybe, maybe a little bit longer. And perhaps that's why they use the name chat, right? Just not that common a name. But this is a paywall Wall Street Journal article, and you get like one or two or three a month or whatever it is for free. And then other than that, they want you to pay for it. So you may or may not be able to see it, but what they're doing, I think, is fascinating, because this article is walking through the day. In the life of this fictional workers, names chat. And it starts by noting that the employer logs his time and his location when he first wakes up to check his email in the morning. So there's stage one. Most of us, according to statistics, check our email first thing in the day and the last thing at night. Now I am not like that. But most of us are. So if you are, hey, I get it. But you check your email, so your employer knows that and then from there, this guy chat, he goes on to the Guest Wi-Fi. Now, here's where it's a little bit interesting. And it's something that a lot of people might not be thinking of. But when you connect to a guest Wi-Fi somewhere that provides a method for someone else, to be able to monitor you and where you are and who you are. So, for instance, if you go to your local Walmart store, Target store, you name it, store, they have Wi-Fi provided for you and that Wi-Fi can then be used to identify you and track you through the store. Some of this technology set up in such a way that it's just so accurate. It knows that you're standing in front of a specific item within the store for a minute or 30 seconds, whatever it might be. And then they can use that data now to figure out more stuff, right, big data is what it's all about. So far, poor old chap, he logged Into the guest Wi-Fi connection at the coffee shop in the morning. And then he went over to the gym. And of course, at the gym, there's a guest Wi-Fi, and you're attracted the gym, your locations tracked, and if you're like most people, you've got your Email Setup, so that it is checking every one every five minutes, 15 minutes or automatically your emails push to you. Right? Isn't that how that works? So now your employer knows where you were, and probably knows you're at the gym and even which Coffee Shop you're at. It depends on whether or not the employer has tracking software on your phone. They may know the exact location of all of those things. Now, if you're connecting to the office, and let's say you get through the email system at the office and using a VPN, that is when a lot of stuff changes and they know even more. So now, Chet arrives at his building where he works. And I don't know if you've seen these and we talked about some significant security problems with this. I'll bring it up again here right now. But when you walk in and you have your phone, and you use your phone as your badge, you know, kind of like used to swipe a badge, or maybe you tapped a badge. Now it'll use Bluetooth on your phone to identify you. Some of the newer systems are even using your face, and some are using facial recognition. Now I have a massive problem with the facial recognition stuff because Now they've got a picture of you. That's on the computer. Right? They have to take that to have the initial validation to say, yeah, this is chat. He's allowed to come in after 6 am and leave after 6 pm or whatever it is, and how secure is their database? I think that's the big question. Do you know if they're keeping your biometric safe? See, it's one thing to have your card lost or stolen, that you might swipe, are easily replaced, it can be disabled. It's one thing to forget your password or have your password stolen? Because you can always change your password. But how about your face? Your face isn't something you can easily change unless you're what was it John Travolta and Nick Nolte's Face Off, the name of that movie. I can hear you all yelling at the radio right now. Anyways, that is not going to change now. The same thing is true of your fingerprint. The same things true of Iris scans are so many types of biometrics now that people are just giving up for free. I heard something great on Stuart Varney's show on TV here this week. And Stewart was talking about yet another breach. And in this particular case, it was the Saudi Prince who had broken into Jeff Bezos iPhone using some software from a company over in Israel. And what's changed? Well, it isn't that there was a hack or that it waJeff Bezos was hacked. You know, we've had so many celebrities hacked before, what he noted, and what I want to bring up here now is we don't seem to care anymore. There was a time when that would be a big deal. What do you mean, the Crown Prince hacked the Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world smartphone and stole all of his pictures. We just don't seem to care anymore. So when we're going into the office in the morning, and it's doing a facial scan, we don't think twice about giving our face information to them. Now the government forces us to if you want a passport, or if you want a driver's license, or if you're going to get on an airplane, you know, it's one thing to have it at the point of a gun. It's quite another just to give it up voluntarily if you ask me. So now, when chats walking around the office, that Bluetooth in his phone is trackable for Near Fields communications. Some of us use our phones to unlock our computers when we're in front of them, just using that Bluetooth. And then on the other side, we have the issue of well, you know, we got Wi-Fi, and we're using the company Wi-Fi, and they want us to use the company Wi-Fi. Tracking as you move around is supposedly utilizing a lot of this data is to see which teams are frequently collaborating make sure employees aren't accessing areas they're not authorized to be in, etc. So once chat set said, this desk is browsers tracked along with his email, there's new software now that are looking at the email, it's looking at things like slack or teams, whatever you might be using to collaborate. It's figuring out whether or not the workers that you're interacting with are responding quickly. See which employees are most productive. Some of the software in the company computers, even snap screenshots every 30 seconds to evaluate the productivity in the hour's work. Now, of course, that's not typically done for people who are who knowledge workers are. That's usually more for people who are, you know, taking dictation or doing some form of a repetitive task but, you know, Hawthorne effect, right? We've been doing this forever. I remember teaching that at Pepperdine as a professor there, ai artificial intelligence keyword scanning also been used and all of this, even chats, phone conversations on his work desk, phone and work cell phone can be recorded, transcribed and monitored. And they're using this to measure productivity, etc. So bottom line, your life is not yours. You are just not secure in almost anything. But I don't want you to give up. I want you to keep trying. I want you to make sure that you're using your iPhone, use Safari because it blocks some of this tracking. And I'm going to have some excellent information for your next couple of weeks. We're working on it now to help you stop the tracking. But check it out. It's on the Wall Street Journal site. You're listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Hey everybody, Welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN online and of course at Craig Peterson dot com. That's Peterson with an "O." Hey, are you panicking about your kids or your grandkids and the use of the smartphones? Do you remember what they were saying about TV years ago? And how it rots the brains and you know, we use it as a babysitter. Kind of still do, don't we? And what effect does this have on their brains? We're starting to see the results of these devices on the younger generations because we've had the iPhone for over ten years. We've had the internet now for Well, just been about almost 20 years since it's been legal to do business online now actually is longer than that because it was 91. Wow, okay, thirty, it's been around for quite a while, and we're starting to see some of the results. We're seeing kids that have a little less patient, and they won't sit and read, like we used to read right, though, won't even sit and watch most movies, their ideal clip on these online sites where they're watching video is 15 to 30 seconds. They now have an attention span less than a goldfish, which is eight seconds a goldfish is attention span. Now, that's a bad thing. Okay. And now that they're into the workplace, some of these kids, here's what's happening now. They'll sit in a meeting, and we're as millennial usually, whereas baby boomers would sit there until give us plan our strategy, what are we going to do? So one of our options, we want to No. Okay, so we're going to do some research. So you look up this, you look up that you talk to these people, and then let's get together in a couple of days. And let's review what we've learned. And then let's make a decision, and you'll try and make a decision in unison. Now, when we're talking about the younger generation, the millennial generation, and of course, we've got Generation Z in the workplace too. Still, when we're talking about millennials, they will tend to try and get the answer right away. They'll sit on their phone, they'll b, and Google will reach out to their friends on social media and ask for their opinion. The friends might not know anything about what it is that you need to have researched. They may not know hardly anything about the whole topic that you're trying to get research, but they will reach out to these friends and get their opinions. And they are opinions are not necessarily worth anything, right? Then they will typically decide. Hey, listen, we're going to decide before we leave today. Whereas it might take the baby boomers a couple of weeks to make a decision, the younger generations millennials and Z's, will both try and make a decision right away. Now, what's the reason for this? And, you know, I, pretty much every psychologist and psychiatrist that I've spoken to, in fact, I think every one of them has said, Listen, this is 100% because of social media. It's 100%. Because of their ability to go online, these kids live online, and they always have. So how about younger kids, let's say you have grandkids or kids that are in their teens are approaching their teens. Now. Even maybe Five years old. I know some people that are getting smartphones and smart devices for their young kids, your five-year-olds. What's going on? Well, there was the research that came out a week ago by two psychology professors. They looked at the data that produced in 40 different studies. And this article in The New York Times goes on to say that they looked at the links between social media use, and they see if there are any ties with depression and anxiety, and they were looking at teenagers. And we've got the lead person here, lead investigator of this study, principal authors Candice Rodgers, a professor, University of California, Irvine, published in the Journal of child psychology and psychiatry. And the quotes here from the New York Times, there doesn't seem to be an evidence base that would explain the level of panic and consternation around these issues. And these are significant issues right with this has been a big debate for a long time as parents as grandparents, we don't want to harm our children. And we know that staring in the phones has affected us, you know, look, look at the relationship between couples and families. Did you see that Robin William's movie from years ago called RV, where the whole family was sitting around in the same room, and they were texting each other? You know, that's kind of the real world. You see people up for meals, and they're on their phones, reading articles, texting, whatever it is they're doing. There is a significant risk to our mental health from these machines in particular, and Congress has looked at some of the legislation they might pass. There have been other things to write but Is it the phone, that's the real problem when it comes to these mental issues, and that's what they were looking at the social media aspects of it. The World Health Organization said last year that infants under a year old should not have exposure to electronic screens. And the children between the ages of two and four should not have more than an hour of sedentary screen time each day. Some of the big execs over in Silicon Valley don't allow their kids to use some of the hardware-software they create. This is a problem from several directions still, right, even though there's no direct correlation between, well, let's call it depression here, and the use of social media by kids. However, I certainly have seen studies that would indicate otherwise, but there Saying that in most cases, the phone is just a mirror that reveals the problems a child would have, even without the phone. So they're saying that focusing on keeping children away from screens and making it hard to have more productive conversations about topics like how to make phones more useful for low-income people, blah, blah, blah, right? So I guess really, what they're saying is that if you compare the effects of your phone, to the impact of maybe eating correctly, or getting enough sleep, or playing games, outdoors smoking, the phone is just a very, very minor. So there was a little bit of a correlation but not a huge one. Mr. Hancock, who is one of the authors here, he's the founder of the Stanford Social Media Lab. He reads similar conclusions. He says he looked at about 226 steps. On the well being of phone users conducted, that he said that when you look at all these different kinds of well being, the net effect size is virtually zero. So there you go. Now, you know, in 2011, doctors were worried about something called Facebook depression. But by 2016 is more research came out, and they looked at that statement, they deleted any mention of Facebook depression, and emphasize that conflicting evidence and the potential positive benefits of using social media because of course, there is another side to all of that. So there you go. There's your answer if you have grandkids or kids, and you've been anxious about your kids, using these devices getting depressed because of social media, you know, okay, it's not a big problem. But here's one thing that I didn't hear dressed in any of these reports. And that is these negative self-images that tend to develop from being on social media. You look at these Instagram posts, and you look at the Kylie Jenners' of the world. I think that many girls and many boys are getting the wrong idea about what a woman's body should or could look like, and also getting a false value about it right. How much does that matter? Does that is that your relationship? I think they're getting a warped view of things, which is why I mentioned at the beginning this program that I think we see now in business, and I've talked with many people about it is very, very real. No question about it. All right. Well, when we come back, we're going to talk a little more about privacy. And this new secret of company that might end privacy as we know, in fact, they kind of already have me listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online, Craig Peterson dot com. Hello, everybody, Welcome back, Craig Peterson here, WGAN online and of course, Craig Peterson.com. Hey, we're talking a lot about privacy this week and next week, and that's mainly because well, it's in the news. And my wife and I have been working hard on some materials that we're going to be providing you guys. The only way you're going to get them is if you're on my mailing list because otherwise, you're never going to find out about them. But step by step guides know the sort of things I usually do this kind of going a step beyond the special reports, and then we're going to have a little webinar on it as well. We're just we're doing a whole bunch because privacy is something that I think we're starting to take for granted. Privacy is what we're beginning to expect. And I think that's a real problem. So when I saw this article this week in the New York Times by Kashmir Hill, I knew I had to share this with you. This is a brand new article. And it is very, very concerning to me for a number of reasons. It's about this guy. His name is Juan tomcat. He is from Australia, and moved up to Silicon Valley, and had been trying to do some sort of social type of an application, something that would, you know, compete out there in the world, make him a few bucks and have some fun doing it. And so he released a couple of different social apps. He had one that put Donald Trump's yellow hair on your own photo. He had a couple of others that were kind of a photo-sharing thing and nothing was all that successful. So we decided to need to be there to do a little bit more research and So he did. And he figured, you know, maybe what we need here is something a little more. That's going to help people recognize other people. So you meet someone, you have their picture, can I find that person just as an example. And in fact, he struggled for quite a while trying to figure out that this software that he had written, figuring out how the heck they were going to market it and, you know, they went to a bunch of different people and tried to figure it out and, and get it all to work. So what he ended up doing was kind of like what Mark Zuckerberg does start Facebook. He illegally crawled Facebook, YouTube Venmo millions of other websites and grabbed photographs from them and recorded the URLs for those photographs. So it's too late for you. If you have any photos anywhere online, basically That he might have found, because we're talking about 3 billion images that are in his database. That is incredible. So we had one programmer, right, this scraper that went in and stole all of these pictures. By the way, it is clearly against the terms of usage for Facebook, as well as YouTube, Twitter, Instagram Venmo. To use these to scrape the sites and to use these pictures for facial recognition. Twitter explicitly banned it, but you know, who cares, right? Like Zuckerberg, when he started Facebook, those allegations of how he stole the Harvard year yearbook and grabbed all of these pictures and then had people rating each other make mostly guys writing girls kind of a dating app sort of thing is kind of how it started. So in Now, he has found some investments. And that includes some serious money guys behind this whole thing. And it is. One of those people is Peter teal, who is one of the people who sit on the board of directors of Facebook. So Facebook says, well, we're looking into him grabbing the photos off of Facebook. I kind of wonder if anything's going to happen with Peter Thiel being on the board of directors as well. Here's how the software works. I don't know if you've seen facial recognition software before, but it basically looks at the difference. The distance between your eyes, your nose, your cheeks, you know, different points on your face that are defined, typically by bones, right. The nose is mostly the cartilage that's given its shape and its position. But it takes all of that and draws a line. I'm sure you've seen this sort of thing before. So what he's done now is he's taken those more than 3 billion images. And he's categorized them all by coming up with the vectors and mathematical formulas describing every last one of those 3 billion faces. So he's trying to figure out what I can now do with this database that I have? And he got some guys to help with some of the marketing. And he got some people to go after a few different categories industries. And he found that law enforcement was very interested in this. So let's talk about law enforcement for a minute and facial recognition technology because law enforcement has legally been using facial recognition technology for 20 years. You watch one of these TV shows like the CSI is on TV, which I don't like those shows because there are too many technical errors, and it drives me crazy. You can't do that doesn't exist, that technology doesn't exist. But so that's why I don't watch a lot of people do. The government has their National Crime information computer centers. They've got databases of faces of arrested people, people who are in prison, etc. The police can run your face through this database of people that they've had contact with before. Now it's expanded. This has been for good 20 years, but it's expanded more recently to include the databases of our DMV is our motor vehicle. In other words, our driver's licenses on the state level, and they pulled all of those in as well. Now those photos have to be shot pretty much straight on, and when they are shot straight on, then the recognition software that the law enforcement personnel are using can kind of recognize that person and do matches and everything else. So it's been an excellent tool for a lot of years. And one of the things law enforcement cannot do is collect data on everybody. So these databases that law enforcement has been using are somewhat limited. Now, I talked about this whole problem, man, it's probably been ten years ago when I first talked about it here on the radio. But the big problem I saw back then was that law enforcement was starting to use these public data aggregators. And I've had a few on the phone here before. I've done interviews with some of their CEOs and their technical people. But what these data aggregators do is take what's called open-source information, as well as paid information. Open-source information might be something they scrape a website, that is, all of the property owners in a town, or they scrape a site that has either information, right, almost everything. They might get feeds from companies like Equifax that are telling them about your credit rating, and you did this, and you bought that. They'll scrape UCC one filing to Secretary of State's office that will say, Yeah, he owns a brand new Ford Explorer, this model number, even license plate numbers they can get. So they'll pull all of this data together, they can get their hands on, and then they sell it. And you've seen ads, and I'm sure online, you know, check yourself online, see what we know about you. These are data aggregators that are selling this data, and it gets used by skip tracers, bounty hunters, law enforcement, all kinds of businesses to determine creditworthiness. They're even used to see 30 news to see if maybe you should or should not get a job. So it's kind of scary data. When you look at it, and I've looked at mine before, when I did these interviews, and I found that about a third to two-thirds of it was correct. Most of it was incorrect. We just had something similar happen when I was out at a wedding out west, and we were at this house. There was a card when we got back from an insurance company and stuck in the door handle. It had the name of a deceased relative on it. Well, you know, she's dead, so they're probably trying to sell insurance. I'm not going to do anything with this card. The next day is when we had the knock at the door, and it was the insurance investigator. She said that this relative had been in a fatal accident with car x. And they were trying to track her down. Well, guess what? She had been deceased for at least six months before the fatal accident occurred. Some third-party had used her identity, and she had to try to figure it out, Someone was hiding who they were. Now this insurance investigator was trying to figure out what's going on. The insurance investigator had her suspicions as to what might be going on. She showed us all of the information she had gathered from these public information sources, these data brokers, and they put it all together. She showed it to my wife, saying you're honest with me, and obviously, you got the death certificate, etc. Sure enough, what did they find? Well, yeah, she'd been dead for a while when the accident happened. But when, when we looked at the details of the information that they had about the deceased relative It was dramatically incorrect. It did show some associations. But it showed people on there we'd never heard of before as relatives. They had relationships wrong. But you know, it was the right place for that insurance investigator to start with and worked well. The police started using these types of databases and the federal investigators as well, because they are not regulated, like the law enforcement agencies are. Now we're starting to see law enforcement agencies, and according to this article in The New York Times, some 600 law enforcement agencies are now using this technology from a company called Clearview. They have been able to solve some bizarre, unbelievable crimes, things that happened. They found a good Samaritan. They found shoplifters they found burglars, thieves, all kinds of things that they couldn't see before because these people had never been involved with law enforcement previously. So I don't know, what do you think there are no limits on the type of data collection. I think maybe we're all going to be in trouble here. Because what happens when someone runs a picture or when they upload pictures into it. It becomes problematic here because these pictures are uploaded, and the company keeps them. Now you've got a blacklist of people that have had contact with law enforcement. What's going to happen when your employer sees that, because this database is not showing perfect matches by their admission at best 70% of the time, they come up with possible matches. Stick around, and we'll be right back. Hey everybody, Welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN and, of course, online at Craig peterson.com. Hopefully, we were able to catch the first hour of today's show. We covered something in this last segment that I want to go more in-depth into, which is this secret company that has kind of come out of left-wing that is going to end privacy as we know it. And, of course, they're breaking the rules and laws all ready to put the silly thing together. And it bothers me, frankly, but above that, right, we're really from above looking at all of this. What's bothering me is honestly, I don't know we call it an apathy where we just don't seem to care that much anymore. We care when we hear about a data breach, and we care when we find out that they stole our personal information. Part of what I'm going to be teaching you in a couple of weeks in this course is how you can tell what information was stolen. So I'm going to give you some dark web tools, the dark internet so that you know where to find out if your information has been stolen. And I think that's important. So we're going to include that in the upcoming webinar, we might put that in as a bonus for attending the webinar coming up in a couple of weeks. But it is disturbing that we can hear about something like what I just talked about the last segment, which you'll find online at my website. That, to me, is very bothersome, but it's also disturbing that we're no longer getting our up and trying to get Congress or somebody to do something about it. Not that I think Congress is the answer well to anything pretty much, right? Anything they touch, they're going to mess up. We're becoming apathetic as business owners, as well as business people. As the person who all of a sudden now is responsible for it within the organization, right, the office managers, those of us who liked computers, and we kind of got stuck with the role, and that's kind of what ended up happening to me to those years ago. Right. I think I'm a lot like you in that respect that, you know, it's challenging to be an expert in everything. I've got to kind of run the office, and I got to make sure. How am I going to learn about all of this security stuff? And then on top of it, the boss is breathing down our necks, trying to get this security stuff done, right. And if you're a business owner, you're worried about it too. But what are you doing about it? And to grease the wheel, I am probably like most people out there, and you really haven't done. You've probably got antivirus software, which, as of now, is utterly useless against the newest attacks. I mean, 100% useless. Why do you think they're giving Norton away now when you buy a subscription to LifeLock? You know, it doesn't do any good anymore, that's excellent technology 20 years ago, but today, it just doesn't work. Collectively as office managers, as business owners, even as C-levels on boards in fair-sized little companies. It's like burying our head in the sand. And we're, we're hoping nothing's going to happen. Right? I'm going into companies frequently, that is, you know, re governed by various rules and regulations, and very aren't doing what the laws and regulations require and they just sitting there saying well We'll just wait for an audit. When an audit happens, if an audit happens, we'll deal with them, then, right? But what happens when your data gets stolen? There are some very crazy things going on right now. We have a client that we picked up last year. It's just incredible. They have a completely new network system, we've fixed up a lot of things for them. I think things are going to be much better for them. We got an alert from our systems that they were getting 4000 hack attempts and our coming from Iran, coming from India, Iran. It is the first time I've got to say, the very first time in all of the years now, but I've been responsible for cybersecurity for all these businesses. It is the first time that I have ever actually seen an Iranian IP address in an attack. They're trying to log into this guy's email account. So one of the employees, and I'm not going to go into more detail than that. But this is real. You hear about breaches every week, and there are more breaches every weekend. It's small businesses, large businesses, home users, just because there are breaches every week, I want everybody to be aware that that doesn't mean that it's acceptable. It may be a kind of standard. Hopefully, it's the old normal, and probably, you're going to be able to find somebody that's going to be able to help you out, right? You go to a company like mine, and you say, Hey, listen, just take care of this for me, or you attend some of my courses so that you can learn some of this stuff that you need to do at least the bare minimum. Hopefully, you're doing that and not just getting passive after hearing about it so much. What's the what's that saying "the first year, you're shocked and horrified by something, and then you become accustomed to it, and then you embrace it." Not that I'm saying you guys are going to embrace hacking and become hackers. I don't think that'll ever happen. But you just get used to that idea until you do get hacked. And then it's all done and over with. Enough of that right now, make sure you're on my email list. So you get my weekly alerts, you get my monthly summaries of the absolute must-do patches for that month. You will also find out about my pop-up training. I haven't been sending out direct notices about the Facebook Lives and things I probably should. Still, you can get all of that just by going to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe because we've got some great stuff coming up here in a couple of weeks going to do some of the training and webinars to go along with it. I want to move on now to another article that was over on the CNN website. And it's talking about a significant change in a major US Corporation. I was on the phone with them earlier today. We've got VRBO, and you might have heard of them. That's Vacation Rentals by owner. They've been around since 95. You may not have heard of them, but they've been around a long time. Airbnb, you probably heard about them. And you've probably heard about Marriott. They've been busy buying up hotel chains, including one chain, in particular, was hacked previously, and Marriott just really inherited all of their problems by buying that company, keep in mind if you're looking to grow and make any acquisitions. What's interesting is how do you deal with a company like Marriott, which is bricks and mortar? How do you deal with the online startups like the VRBO and Airbnb is, it is completely changing the way the hospitality business works. I kind of put "hospitality" in air quotes here. You probably didn't see me. But is it hospitality when all you have is a home that you're going into an apartment you're going into versus a fully functional hotel? Right? That's the big question. So this is cool, I think, because Marriott has decided not to try and beat Airbnb at its own game. It's going to join them. April last year, Marriott came out with its homes and villas program. And it has 5000 rentable premium and luxury homes in almost 200 locations around the world. It is amazing. It's a significant departure for Marriott. They've been offering hotel rooms for nearly 100 years. But in this case, Marriott is going to do what Airbnb and VRBO have been doing and offering homes and villas up for rent. And this is a part of the whole sharing economy, bike scooters, and homes. That's a code from Stephanie Lennart. She's Marriott's global chief Commercial Officer, when she told CNN, home rentals and being B's have been around for decades, so the core idea itself isn't that new. The new part is technology platforms, bringing it to consumers at scale so that it's democratized and affordable. So Marriott's already had success, obviously through hotel business, and as I said, I was on the phone with him this morning. I'm going to be staying in one of their hotels again. But the company is being led here by Stephanie outside of the brand comfort zone, that you know brick and mortar. It's great. They've been around for almost 100 years. But everything is changing out there. And are you changing in your business? Are you making it easy for your customers to do business with you? And that's what they were asking themselves. They've been kind of tracking and watching the home rental market. She had a pilot program going over in Europe and 2018. That became ultimately the homes and villas program that they had. They found that their most loyal customers at Marriott 30% of them had used a home rental in the prior year. I've used Airbnb. I've used VR Bo, and you know, frankly, I've had mixed results from the two of those different things. And they found out nine times out of 10 this person was renting a home for a whole different purpose and they were getting that from someone else and Marriott thinks that this is a complimentary business and adds to their core business. So isn't that kind of interesting? people stay more than triple the average one and a half night stays at the hotels in these different types of bookings. And they think that they are going to be able to do a whole lot more. They're focusing on some of these millennial trends. And frankly, you know, I'm an old G. But I have to tell you, boomers, age 23% of travelers are age 55 to 64, booked a homestay from 21% in 2017. So it's happening. We're all doing it out there, and congratulations to married for sticking their neck out. And frankly, you might need to two so keep an eye out for what other people are doing in competing industries and maybe borrow their ideas. Listen to Craig Peterson and WGAN. We'll be right back. We're going to talk a little bit about lawmakers and what small businesses are telling them right now. Welcome back. Welcome, welcome. Craig Peterson here online and on WGAN and many other radio stations during the week. Thanks for joining me. Lawmakers have long been accused of being corrupt. I'm not going to defend them, that's for sure. Here is a different type of corruption and one that a lot of people haven't thought a lot about. You know, there's been a lot in the news about Joe Biden's son. Hunter, getting money from Ukraine. Joe Biden's brother getting what is it $1.5 billion from Iraq is the latest story that I saw out there. Nancy Pelosi's son-in-law, getting money from Ukraine, John Kerry's relative getting money from Ukraine, right. You do hear a lot about alleged corruption, and you have to wonder, frankly, how do these Congress critters go down to Washington, DC, nary a penny in their pocket and end up multimillionaires. It's nuts, isn't it? And of course, they exempt themselves from certain laws that we have to live by, for instance, insider training trading rules. If you're a congressman hearing bills, it is regulations will likely be added here or there, or you're going to mandate some action by businesses. It is perfectly legal for you to go out and invest in companies that are going to take care of this problem and charge businesses a lot of money, right. All of a sudden, you're a likely multi-millionaire. If you or I were to have done that, we would be nailed for insider trading. It's long been a double standard. But here's another side of that double standard that's bothered me for a very long time. This isn't business. It includes unions. And this is where a business or union wants to get rid of the competition. And what they'll do is they'll get a congress critter to sponsor a bill that let's say it requires a licensing for something like most states have licensing for barbers. Are you kidding me? What does a barber need to know? Well, you don't know how to haircut. But you know what? A state-sponsored haircut. What does that look like something under the Soviet Union? Well, they have to know how to clean the instruments and clean them properly. They don't use autoclaves. But they do use alcohol and various other things to clean them. So what does that take a five-minute quiz on it? If you want to keep barbers out, you can put together a nice little Barbers association that goes to the state capitol. They say I think for the health and safety of our citizens in the state, we've got to have rules and regulations surrounding barbers. It gets passed. And now all of a sudden, you get to control how many barbers are. And in some states, they have several people who are allowed to have licenses look at taxi medallions in the big cities like New York City as an example. And in New York City, there's only so many of them. And they were valued at like a million and a half bucks apiece, just crazy money, and people suck their life savings into them. And then, of course, the bottom fell out of the whole medallion taxi market when Uber show showed up, and, of course, some of these other wild ride-hailing services. So we've known for a long time that both unions and businesses use the federal government to squeeze out the competition and I don't think there's any The real debate about that it happened. It happens all of the time. The left does it the right does it. They all do it to us. Well, there this last Friday, there was a hearing, and there were executives from four different businesses that pleaded with federal lawmakers to rein in Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. It is a New York Times article. And this was a congressional hearing that was in Boulder, Colorado. They had some smaller companies. Now, these companies are pretty big in their market segments, but much, much smaller than Google, Facebook, Apple, or Amazon. We're talking about such a nose, pop sockets, Basecamp, and tile. Now I have used equipment. I've had people from all of those companies on my radio show before, and those top executives testified that the biggest technology company Companies blocked their businesses. They stopped them from growing. And according to the New York Times, their stories vary. But they shared a theme that tech giants have used their powerful positions in search eCommerce, online ads, and smartphones to squeeze them out, as well as other rivals. Now, when we get down to this, I think it also boils down to the antitrust laws that we have. Right through, the whole idea was, well, we're not going to let companies get too big. We're not going to let them get two horizontal we're going to help make sure they stay in the industry, make sure there's competition. But we say that on the one hand, the federal government does right, but then, on the other hand, they don't do it at all. So let's take a great example of General Motors and what happened to GM. When a company gets to a certain size, the government This side that it is too big to fail. So our lawmakers look at it and say, Oh my gosh, how many voters work at that company. So instead of letting the market take care of the problem, and these, By the way, most of these people probably ultimately would have had jobs, probably better jobs, probably higher-paying jobs. But instead of letting the market take care of it, and split up GM, keep the profitable divisions alive, maybe let GM continue to operate them and sell off the unprofitable divisions or let them die off. Which is the way the markets work, right? It's the fittest survival of the fittest if you will, and that does well for everybody because now you have a stronger company that's doing better. While we're in the car industry. Look at what happened with Chrysler twice now twice. They've been bailed out by the tax. payers. So why didn't the antitrust laws work in those cases? Right? They didn't work. We've got examples here in New England, look at Seabrook and what's happened there and with the Old Man, and the costs that have been incurred by the ratepayers. Then we have this whole about hubbub about tobacco, so what's happening now is these big guys like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, are capitalizing on the strength that they have because of their size. The government regulations, and using it as a weapon against the smaller startups. And this happens every time, as I said, this is a left issue. It's the right issue. It's unions, and it's big business. These are the guys we're talking about right now. It sort of happened just this week in a federal hearing. So you now have these big companies that we don't let the market deal with anymore. Do you think that the government would allow Google to go under? Now none of these companies, to the best of my knowledge, are having cashflow issues right now Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. They're probably not likely to go under. But these smaller guys, you know, Pop Sockets and Basecamp have had issues. They've had products that they've had to let go because they weren't profitable enough, right. That sounds like what GM should have done. Tile? Who knows these guys, right? There is not the competition there needs to be out there. How do you compete with Google? Now there are some out there. I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google because DuckDuckGo does not track me. It does not sell my information. It is a pretty darn, safe place to go. Apple I use because they do not make money off of selling my data. They make money off of selling Hardware and Software and Services right. So Apple, according to Tile, is put up hurdles for their smartphone app that didn't apply to Apple's competing product. The high-end audio company said Google copied its patent speaker technology and use its dominance and search to enter new markets. Pop sockets were to make smartphone grip said that Amazon bullied it into sales agreements and ignored complaints about counterfeits on the Amazon retail platform. It goes on and on, you know, intimidating with a smile. And frankly, as I think I pointed out pretty clearly, I think Congress is part of this problem, not necessarily part of this solution. So what are you going to do about it? Let me know what you think me at Craig Peterson calm. Just drop me an email me at Craig Peterson dot com, and you're listening to me on WGAN. Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here back on WGAN. It's our last half hour together today but fear not. We have more coming up this week. Make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast platform, whether that's tune in Apple podcasts. I'm all over the place on any major podcasting platform. You can just search for me, and you'll find me Well, you know, if you search for me, you're not going to find me but search for Craig Peterson, and hopefully, you'll find me. I hope you saw this morning's email because we have covered several features there. We also have links to this week's podcast so that you can watch those, so hopefully, you've got that. And then we're keeping you up to date on the latest security news that you need. The patches you have to apply at your home and your company. The Big ones. And we define big and vital based on how easy it is for a bad guy to use it and whether or not we know bad guys are using it out there. We contacted the FBI this week, because of something we've been seeing going on. The FBI puts all this together and shares it. I want to put a plug out there for Infragard. There are chapters in all 50 states now. I think you will enjoy it if you are the person who's responsible for the security of your organization. Now, this includes health care and financial but even lawyers and doctors and everybody that might be considered part of the critical infrastructure is invited. I find it useful because I do get some excellent insight information, sometimes directly from the FBI through the FBI Infragard program. Now you can have to apply, and they have to do this basic background check on you. And then you can become a member and, and they share some stuff with you. They don't share with everybody else. Sometimes I think that it's, you know, they share with us maybe a little less than they should. I believe they should share with us a little bit more, but it's well worth it if you are someone involved in security. So I, you know, you've got my feeling here already right on IoT, the Internet of Things and smart homes. I have some smart home equipment in our home. There's an apple speaker, what do they call that Apple home, something like that I can't even remember now. And I've got some of the Amazon Echo stuff. I've got a little echo hockey pocket. So there's two or three them in the house, and we've got one of the apps Amazon Fire tablets. And we also have an Amazon Echo two, which is one with the screen. Then we use that for talking to grandkids and stuff, but also asking questions playing music and things. It is so handy. And then we've used Apple home also to hook up some lights and other devices. Now the apple home, by far, has the best security design of all of the rest, it tends to be a little bit more expensive. And there are not as many vendors using it because it's a bit more expensive. And Apple frankly was a little bit late to that game, but we are using it to control lights in the home, which is kind of cool. So if you invest in a lot of this IoT stuff, maybe you've made the mistake of getting Google Home. Perhaps you're using the Amazon Echo stuff, and maybe you are using the Apple stuff there. You know those are the two better ones that are out there right now. Neither Apple nor Amazon are known to sell your information or have big hacks against their devices. I chuckled when I mentioned the Google Home known to share and sell your data, and be hackable. And they found some apps people were using that were recording everything they were saying and uploading it to the internet. So stay away from that. But there are a lot more companies and just those that are in the IoT space. For instance, Verizon now has Home Security stuff where they have cameras will install, and they have alarm systems, spectrum charter also has that type of thing. So you invest a lot of money in that, and you've heard ads on the station here for some of these different you know, home security devices, wired yourself. You don't have to. Why is it just everything in between, right? Well, what happens when one of those companies decides that they don't want to be in that business anymore? That is what's happening right now with Charter Cable is killing its Home Security Service. It's been telling customers that the security devices that they've purchased, they weren't on a month to month. It wasn't a lease, and it wasn't a rental. But they're saying that their devices, the devices they purchased, will stop working on February 5. Amazing, right? So this is Charter Cable, you might know it as Spectrum that's another brand name that they've been using. And over the years, some customers to spend a lot of money on these products that will no longer work. Now I mentioned in the last segment so knows and when I was talking about the big con companies and unions left and right both working with the government to keep competition away. Well, Sonos has done something kind of similar to this charter thing. If you have an older Sonos speaker, they will give you a discount on a new Sonos speaker, because they're not going to support the old ones anymore. And they will then brick your former Sonos speaker. So the speaker that you bought and paid money for a bricking means it will no longer work. There is no way to recover it. There's no way to make it work ever again. That is a very, very big deal until a lot of people upset with Sonos. But you know, as we go forward, this is going to happen more and more and more. You're going to have internet cameras, and you're going to have sensors, they're going to be useless in a couple of weeks. Now, that's bad when you consider some people. It is according to the DSL report. Some people spend 1200 bucks on their systems. So here's a massive problem for you if you are a Charter customer Spectrum customer, and you have their security devices, and this is something that you have to watch out for, right? It's, it's the old question going with a smaller guy a bigger guy, what do you want to do? Companies come to come to me to help them with security because they know I care. They know it's a family business, that we have the whole family involved in, you know, obviously, as well as other people that work for us, versus going to an Ernst and Young, that's going to charge them an arm and a leg. They're not going to get any kind of attention from, but when we're talking about this type of equipment, this is where I think you get a real win. By going with Amazon, they are going to be a runaround. They can afford to upgrade your equipment with you, and I'm not worried about getting abandoned. Buy them a charter partner now with Amazon's ring and boat to give customers a free equipment bundle if they buy a year's worth of monitoring. Well, isn't that wonderful? So if you're an existing customer, you can throw away all of your stuff and get getting new hardware for free if you sign up for a year, and if you don't own any of their existing equipment, you can still get a hardware bundle and a year of service. So the big question is why there's no way for charter customers to keep using devices. They're using the ZigBee specification, which I've had the ZigBee people on my show before. It allows multi-vendor interoperability for smart home products. Why can't they just switch on over to another ZigBee based system? Well turns out that years ago, spectrum devices were firmware coded to prevent them from being seen and unusable within their Normal University. ZigBee devices. So this is a problem we're going to have going forward. It goes back to also data portability that we wanted for so long. Remember Hippo is supposed to give us medical record portability, we go to any doctor, they'd all have our medical records the hospital to be able to read them. And that was more than 25 years ago, and it still hasn't happened. So I'm not going to hold my breath. These alarm systems are going to be able to keep our, you know, keep it useful for the next five or ten years, more than going to be going away. All right, when we get back, we're going to talk about a significant event that occurred last week with Microsoft. And another big event. We're going to talk about what the FBI has been saying about Apple lately. So stick around, and we'll be right back. You're listening to Craig Peterson. On WGAN and online. Craig Peterson.com. Hey everybody, welcome back. Craig Peterson here, WGAN and online at Craig pet

Welcome!   The Holidays are almost here -- Hannakah begins tonight and the middle of next week is Christmas - Boy this year has flown by.  There is a lot of Tech in the News so let's get going! For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Signature Anti-Virus does not adequately protect you from today's Malware Lessons We Failed To Learn and Therefore Are Doomed To Repeat Business Computers Should Only Be Used For Business 5G - Not Ready For PrimeTime...Yet! Are You At Risk from Your Outsourced Software Provider Security - Knowing What You Have Is Essential Chrome 79 will continuously scan your passwords against public data breaches Getting the Perfect Tech Gift for Your Special "Techie" --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson   Hey, hello everybody, Craig Peters on here on w GAM and online at Craig peterson.com. Hopefully, you're able to join me on Wednesday mornings as well as I am on live with Ken and Matt, we always talk about the latest in technology and news and of course in security since that's primarily what I've been doing for the last 20 plus years here in the online world, man, just thinking back, it's, you know, I first got on the internet. Of course, it wasn't called that. But way back in the early 1980s. And I remember in fact when I first started doing networking professionally back in 75, and there was no worry about anything with you know, yeah, okay, we didn't want people to hack into so you'd have leased lines for your business and I was doing a bunch of work. from banks way back when right, one of my first jobs, and I was really enjoying it, I just learned a whole lot up to today. And we're going to cover this here because my gosh, it's it has changed. The Internet used to be very libertarian, everybody on it was very libertarian or conservative. Of course, that's because there were a whole ton of government contractors on the ARPANET as well as some colleges and universities. And you look at it today, and you think that really it's changed dramatically which it has. But I think the ratio is probably still about the same. You've got the silent majority that just doesn't say much about anything, right. And then you've got this hugely vocal minority who's just yelling and screaming all of the time. And then some of these tech companies that are trying to straddle somehow in the middle and not get everybody all upset with them. It's really a Much different world. But when we're talking about security, it is nothing at all like it used to be. You used to go online, and you'd have some fun you, you know, exchange emails with people, you'd share some files and some fun things. I remember this one whole thread on chases. That was just absolutely amazing. I think I came up this time of years while it was all these puns about different cheeses. It was a lot of fun. Now today, we've got a whole different internet out there and a great article by Robert Limos and he is looking at WatchGuard Technologies' latest quarterly report that was published just last week. And this network security firm found that the percentage of malware that successfully bypassed anti-virus scanners IT companies network gateways has increased Significantly, watch guard technology is saying that the amount of malware that signature-based antivirus software catches, has plummeted to about 50%. Now, I think their numbers are high because I think it's more like 20%. But they're getting specific here. They're talking about the amount of malware that comes into a network via an external source. In other words, people are accidentally pulling it from a website they visit, or perhaps it's been injected into their systems through someone who's visiting their network and using another vulnerability. But they're saying that antivirus software This is signature-based stuff, that's what you get from Norton Antivirus. That's what you get from, you know, the Symantec people from McAfee from all of these different antivirus companies out there. It is just horrific what's happening because of what's known as zero-day now you might have heard of this before you might not have but basically what zero-day malware is, is malware is nasty software and malware includes things like viruses, worms, Trojans, etc. It is this type of malicious software that has not been seen in the wild before. And what it used to me is they would, you know, some brilliant person who as my mother would say, Why don't they do something useful with their time, some brilliant PR person would come up with a piece of software, no one had ever seen a way of attacking that no one had ever seen before. And they would attack us and they would get through because there was no signature for it or the engines in the antivirus software just could not manage to handle. You know malware like this new piece of malware that just came out the problem we're having today is that the majority of malware act just like zero-day. So here's what happens with a signature-based attack. You can think of it just like your body's anti-virus system night than what you have in your body. And your body looks at something that it sees and says, Have I seen this before. And if it has seen it before, it knows to attack it before. It grows really big and kind of starts to get out of control, and then the body has to attack it after it's already really, you know, it's taken the beachhead if you will use a military term. I've been watching a lot of world war two movies lately, but it's taken that beachhead and now has control of the beach and is starting to get in further and it's very difficult to get out versus it recognizes it almost right away as a nasty virus. And goes ahead and end the Jackson You know you have more cells in inside your body inside your skin there are more cells that are foreign to your body then there are body cells when you start counting all the bacteria and everything that's in your system and on your skin. It's just incredible. So our body relies on a lot of these things. In order to keep us healthy, if we had no bacteria, you be in trouble. It's like you know if you go on antibiotics, which is an anti-bacterial, what does the doctor tell you to do? Well, you know, start eating yogurt and, and other things. Maybe take some Kombucha or various other things in order to try and stay healthy. Get that good bacteria going in your gut again. Well, when your body is attacked by something that hasn't seen before. That's what we would call in the computer world as a zero-day virus has never been seen by Your body or in the case of a computer's never been seen by this signature-based antivirus software. So what the bad guys have been doing is they figured out how Yes, indeed we are trying to block them. And they figured out that the majority of us are using these signature-based antivirus software packages. So they've designed the viruses and the malware to change itself every time. So no longer can the antivirus software, just look for certain signatures. So for instance, if you were always attacked by blonde-haired blue-eyed Norwegians, you might be cautious next time you see a blonde-haired blue-eyed Norwegian approaching towards you maybe with a baseball bat or whatever it is, they might have in their hands, right? So you get worried about it. What's the old expression? Once burn shame on me. You twice burn shame on me. Right? So we learn we respond based on how we've been attacked before. And so does the antivirus software now it can take them days or weeks, even months to get a signature out and get it all dispersed. You know, I'm talking about the old software, not the newest stuff, not the enterprise stuff we use for our business client. But the stuff that you use as a consumer and Heaven forbid if your business and you're using stuff like Norton Symantec, or McAfee or any of these other a VG antivirus software packages that are based on signatures because they just don't work. So what happens is they change themselves constantly. So it might be a Norwegian, but they dyed their hair they put on colored contact lenses, and they change their clothing. That's effectively what's happening with our computers nowadays. It may be that Viking that's approaching you but you Don't know it because it just doesn't look like they change everything about themselves at least most everything except the malicious intent and what they end up doing once they've got control of you. So watch guard is saying that this is a major change here. Now I'm going to quote directly from them. The big change is that more and more malware is becoming evasive. So the signature-based protection is no longer sufficient. There's nothing wrong with having it because it will catch 50% to two-thirds of the traffic but you definitely need something more. And that's why I've been recommending you guys do a few things you can do the free stuff. If you are not a business, you can go to my favorite right now. Open DNS and sign up for an account. They have some paid stuff. I think it's $20 a month per computer, for business to get the basic business service. It's free. For a regular home user, but it does not allow you to do any customization. And then there are a few packages in between open DNS. Now we use a commercial version of is an enterprise version called brawler. That's where the calling it now, but it's the highest level where we can, you know, watch it and maintain it. So that's step number one of what you need to do get open DNS so that if you do get one of these pieces of nastiness like ransomware, and it tries to call home, it can't get the phone number, right. He can't call home because there's another phone number. And I think that's a very important thing to do. It's free if you're home user, you might want to pay for the family plan would block certain scary sites and certain things you probably don't want your kids to see pornography and other things open dns.com and then the other thing to do, I had it in my big course this last year and that was how to harden Windows machine. It's rather involved. And I'll probably do a course early next year on this. But make sure you harden your machine, you're going to want to turn off stuff you don't need, you're going to want to make sure your firewall is set up properly to do the types of blocks that you need. You're going to want to make sure that you've got Microsoft's new malware software installed properly and running properly. So I'll have a course on this early next year that you can get. Because when you're talking about 50%, and I've seen numbers as low as 20% effectiveness with anti-virus software, you have to do something. Hey, if you're looking to buy some gifts, I'm going to be talking about some of them in today's show, including five g should you get that phone, you're listening to Craig Peterson on w GAN and online. Greg peterson.com. Stick around. We'll be right back.   Craig Peterson   Hey, are you thinking about buying a mobile phone? We're going to talk about that right now. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGN and online at Craig Peterson calm. Now you've heard about 5g. You're probably using 4g LTE right now, on your phone and maybe mobile devices you may be your iPad or a tablet that you might have. Amazon has its Kindles. They do not, by the way, have 4g LTE on them, at least, for the most part, they're using some of the much older technology because frankly, all they're doing is sending books right? Which are pretty small. But it is that time of year that we're buying presents and there are only a few days left here for that holiday season, purchasing time. And we've got a lot of competition in the 5g world. So let's talk about what this is. And I'll give you some tips. But what is going on? 5g holds a lot of promise. Now I don't know if you remember I remember how shocked I was at how fast 4g was. I bought a phone. And it had 4g LTE in on it. It was an Android phone. And I vowed never again for so many reasons. And you've heard them on the show here before, but I had bought an Android phone, and I didn't have 4g up where I lived. And I drove down. We were heading down. I think it was till Pennsylvania take one of the kids to camp. And I was going through Valley and I noticed Wait a minute. There's a big city right there. I got 4g so I immediately went to speed test.net and I ran the test to see just how fast is for G. And I was just shocked. I was getting like 20 megabits a second, which was absolutely amazing. Because I've been using cell phones since they first came out. And you know, back in the day it was 14 for right? Oh, cell phone so fast. And now just to see 20 megabits was absolutely mind-blowing. But there are some major limitations to the 4g LTE network that we are using today. And those limitations are speed for one. And then the other thing is the number of devices that can be supported. And then the cost of the data and the data transfers. So 5g has been under development for quite a while. And this is not we're not going to get into Huawei and how they stole all their technology. It really appears to be from our friends up at Nortel and put the whole company out of business because of the spine that they did. And thank goodness finally, we've got a president who's trying to do something about it. But five G's real promise for us right now is that we will get two things will get a gigabit worth of data bandwidth, which means by the way, that we may not even bother with Wi-Fi in our homes if you live in an area that has full 4g or 5g coverage because it's just going to be just as fast as your cable is right now. Now the cable companies are probably going to try and compensate by lowering their prices and giving you faster and faster and faster internet. But for a lot of people, it's going to make economic sense because the cost isn't going to be high. And then the second thing that 5g is going to give us is the ability to have billions of devices connected to the 5g network. That means that everything from our cars Which really the next generation of cars self-driving cars really do need 5g so they can talk to each other. So they can continually upload data to the cloud to let all of the routing computers know about local weather conditions and, and road and where the potholes are and everything is just, it's going to be amazing, right? On the one hand, on the other hand, well, there might be some data leakage that we might not want. So the cars are going to have it but so is pretty much every device that you have. A couple of years ago, I talked about the new jacket, the new trucker jacket that Levi's hat out. And that trucker jacket was designed specifically to connect your phone to your phone and allow you to control your phone. So it had Bluetooth in it. You could touch these little wires that were embedded into the sleeve with your hand and use that to control your cell phone. You know, listen to music and Suddenly things are just kind of cool. So our clothes are going to have the internet in them. Our computers, of course, everything you buy a laptop, it's going to have 5g built-in, you're not going to need to have an external device anymore. Just list goes on and on and on. I've everything that's going to happen is going to be phenomenal. But it is not there yet. And Apple did not include 5g with the iPhone 11 this year, it will include it with the iPhone 12. That's coming out next year. And I saw a very, very good summary of what's probably going to be coming out of Apple in September next year. The guy that published it has been spot on with most everything that Apple was coming up with. And they are he's saying that they are going to be having 5G on the phone and it would make a lot of sense. But right now you can put in orders for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 plus the one plus 70 that's There are other phones that are claimed to have 5g. But listen, everybody, it is still too early to buy a 5g phone. That is really my big tip when it comes to 5g right now, these networks have not fully standardized, they are not running, none of them are running full 5g anywhere except in a couple of major cities. The biggest problem with building out the 5g networks is that they need to have basically what we've come to know as cell towers everywhere. I mean, everywhere. These are little micro things that are not big towers like we have right now. You know, those fake trees that you see that are actually cell towers. Now, these are going to be small boxes and they're going to be on pretty much every street corner in the big cities. They'll be on the sides of buildings. They'll be on the sides of people's houses. Cell companies are going to pay us to put these on our homes so that we can now provide 5g to us and to our neighbors. And then there's going to be people who will be upset because of the radiation, even though it's non-ionizing, and it's not known to cause any harm, people will be upset about it. But these things are going to be everywhere. And that's because remember, I'm talking about one gigabit worth of bandwidth coming down to your device. Well, you cannot do gigabit service on lower frequency so they have moved to higher frequencies. The old UHF TV channels are pretty much I think they're all gone now throughout the country. And the FCC has bought back the bandwidth and has auctioned it off to all of these different companies that wanted to buy it. And it's just everything is going to change and with the high frequencies that they need in order to deliver these beads, they now have a problem and that is these higher frequencies do not penetrate glass. They don't penetrate walls very well at all. And they just don't penetrate metal at all basically, it's really bad. So it T Mobile has announced nationwide 5g available as of last Friday. That is pretty darn cool. It's got a 600 megahertz 5g network which is going to cover most of the country. That is pretty impressive. But the trade-off is it's using low band 5g which means it is good at providing slightly boosted speeds inside buildings and is available in a lot more places than what competitors offer 18 T and Verizon are offering the opposite. They have ultra-wideband networks right now superfast speeds, but very, very small footprints very small pocket, and you got to be standing near one of these towns This is kinda cool T Mobile is expecting with theirs. That actually is p mag is PC Magazine, you can expect a boost of about 15 megabits with their new 5g nationwide. And you might see 150 megabits if you have a new 5g phone or 700 megabits if you have 4g LTE. So not a huge right now, but just wait. Okay, wait until next summer next fall, when things are really going to start happening. All right, stick around. We got a lot to cover still we're going to be talking about some guests who will talk about some of the big hacks of the year. What does it mean to us? What can we do? I'm going to give you some tips and some tricks, what not to do on your work computer third party security risks and some lessons from the National Security Agency. You're getting it right here from Craig Peterson on WGA and Craig Peterson Hello, welcome back. Greg Peterson here on w GAN will be enjoying the show today. We got a lot to cover here. Awesome. Good news, some gift ideas. I've got a very cool article from Ars Technica, about nine gift ideas for the tech enthusiasts in your life. And frankly, I am totally into this. It gave me a couple of ideas in fact of things that I'm going to be getting for people. So you might want to stick around and listen to that for the enthusiast in your life. And we're going to start right now with something that I think pretty much everyone's can be interested in. If you are, you know an employee, if you work at a company, and you use computers, there is a couple of words of caution here. In this segment, Now, first of all, the business computers are owned by the business. And that's kind of where this Bring Your Own Device thing has gotten everything a little bit fuzzy, you know, so if you are using your phone, for instance, your smartphone, and you're using it for work purposes, it's not the businesses phone. So there's not a whole lot that they can say about your phone and how you use your phone. However, the business has an absolute right to its data, and kinking troll, frankly, how you use your phone for the business data, right? Well, how about the computers that are actually owned by the computer? What can you do legally? And what can't you do? What can the business tell you that you should do with it and what can they not tell you what to do? Well, the bottom line is it depends. It depends on the business and what their policies are. So overall, that's kind of the first place you should check your employee handbook. Now we've provided a lot of businesses with employee handbook sections on this and you can certainly get them from your attorney from your corporate attorney, or from HR if you're an employee there. But if you're using a work-issued computer, now that includes a desktop computer includes a laptop, it's going to include things like iPads, even phones, you've probably checked your personal email on that device, you might have stored some files on there. You, you might have used it for a number of different things. Now in many cases, it's not a big deal as far as the company is concerned. You know, if you've got kids right to have a life outside the office, so for you to be able to send an email to the BBC. Or to make a few phone calls because babysitting didn't show up or a kid is sick or whatever. Most employers say that's absolutely fine if I died personally would not work for an employer. That said, That's not fine. I think that's a very, very big deal a very bad thing, the right companies that are like that. But when you start to store your private files on the company's computer, or maybe the company's Dropbox or Google Drive, or you are maybe going down a rabbit hole, as you started with something on Cora or you started with something somewhere else, and all of a sudden before you know it, it's an hour two hours later, or heaven for Ben, you are going to Facebook or some of these other sites to poke around. Then things change. Now many of us use messenger on Facebook in order to keep in contact with family and friends. So is it legit to have a messenger window open? Is it legit to do that, right? Well, the bottom line is you probably shouldn't do any of this on a computer provided by your employer. You're not necessarily breaking the law, but you could get fired if it's against your company's policies. And also, you need to remember that employers can install software to monitor what you do on your work-issued laptop or desktop. Now we do not monitor employees and what they're doing on a computer, except to watch for things that the employees might be doing that might harm the business directly. In other words, if an employee's bringing in a file from home, we're going to check that file. If they're downloading something from the internet. We're going to check that download. We're going to check their emails are going to clean them up, we're going to stop the ransomware we're going to stop the zero-day attacks that I talked about earlier. As well as all of the known types of vulnerabilities. But remember that not everybody is like us, right? We are not interested in getting involved in the businesses Workplace Relations, a lawsuit that a business might want to bring to against an employee, right? That's not what we do. Although we've certainly been pulled into those before in the past. And you need to keep that in mind as an employee because they can monitor what you do, they might put keyloggers on there to see what you're typing, they might have a software that takes a random screenshot. We've done that before with these workers that are doing a specific project. So we outsource something, there might be a graphic or might be writing an article or something, and we're paying by the hour for that contractor to do the work. So as part of the agreement, we have software that sits on the computer and randomly takes screenshots So we have an idea that yes, indeed, they are actually working on our stuff. And it took them five hours and we spent it to take one hour. And it's because they're slow, not because they were out wandering the internet and doing research on the party that's going to be coming up next week at the office or at their home, right. So be very careful about it. And the type of surveillance and security software that's installed on the company computer is usually based on two things, one, how large the company is, and what kind of resources they have to dedicate to watching you, and what type of information you deal within your role. Now, almost all of our clients in fact, now I think of it I think all of our clients are in what are called regulated industries. So if you're a car dealer, you're in a regulated industry, because you have payment card information, you have financing information on all kinds of personal information. So that has to be monitored, right? We have doctors' offices that have HIPAA requirements personal again, personally identifiable information, healthcare information. So security numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, and under the new regulations that are coming out right now, January one in California and Massachusetts in the European Union right now, and they are working on similar regulations on the federal level, even an email address is considered to be personally identifiable information. Until the list goes on and on if you have government contracts, we have clients that have DFARs or Defense Department requirements or FINRA, which is for financial organizations, right? That's what we do. So all of these heavily regulated businesses need to have software that is going to detect that someone is trying to exfiltrate data, shut it down immediately. We need to know that employees are trying to steal information. And in many of these cases, we will work with the company if there are lawsuits and ensue because of the regulation or because of other reasons out there. So if you're working with a company like this, which is frankly, in this day and age, every company, right, what, what employer does not have security numbers of employees? How do you pay them if you don't have the social security numbers, those are all falling under the regulations nowadays. And unfortunately, a lot of businesses don't pay attention to that. So a very small company, they're probably not doing this. But larger companies are definitely going to be doing this. And there's a great little quote here from Jesse crims. He's an Information Security Analyst over the New York Times and he said Without supporting evidence at this scale, at scale, it's pretty rare that people are not doing heavy surveillance and tends to generate a lot of useless data, roped employee into liability issues and generally make the team that monitors the surveillance systems miserable. In other words, you probably don't want to know. And that's the standard we take. We make sure that all of the regulations are complied with, but whether or not someone's sending an email to the babysitter or whatever, it's just not worth it. We're worried about espionage. Okay, so there you go. There are some tips for you. And using business security or using a business computer at work. Stick around. We'll be right back. We got some more stuff to talk about, including some major updates to the Google Chrome browser. Should you be using it anymore. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome back. We're listening Of course on WGAN or online at Craig Peterson dot com, you'll find me on pretty much every podcasting platform out there. And if you really enjoy the show, you know one of the best ways to let me know is to share it. I love to see all of the people who are listening and getting feedback from everybody so send me a note as well. But here's where you can go if you would like to give me a five-star review, just go to Craig Peterson comm slash iTunes. And right there, you can give me a five-star review. on Apple, they're still kind of the 800-pound gorilla in this space. Rumor has it that the next release of iOS is going to have some major improvement to this whole podcasting stuff. Apple really kind of started it with the iPod, which is where it got the name from. I still have one of my original iPods kicking around. It was frankly, it was my favorite device for listening to music. Anyhow, let's talk a little bit about some of the browser issues that are out there right now. Many people are concerned about the web browsers you're using. We know we're being monitored. We know we're being watched right now, by these big companies. Google makes its money by what? By selling our information. Facebook's the same way. Now Google is going to sell us advertising, and so is Facebook. And frankly, I would rather know about cars and see advertisements for cars. When it is the time I'm looking to buy a car right? And I'm never going to buy a lot of from Russia, right? So why would I want to see ads for that? So I am Pro, the monitoring in that space. Right. I, you know, you kind of go back and forth about that. You look at what President Obama's team did back when he was running for election the first time where they grabbed all of Facebook's data about everyone. And then they used highly targeted advertising. And then you saw what happened eight years later with President Trump and while the Cambridge Analytica scandal that was Child's Play compared to what President Obama's team did, but somehow President Obama's team didn't get in trouble for it. But President Trump's team certainly did even though Trump's don't get into that right now. But the browsers that we're using are tracking us. And remember, again, this old adage, it's old now, right? It's relatively new frankly. But if you do not pay for service, the odds are you are the product. And Google certainly considers that. And so does Facebook, that you are the product. So when you're looking at browsers, what should you be using the biggest browser out there right now the one that any software developers going to aim at is the Google Chrome browser. Because that's what most people use. It is really a great browser. From a functionality standpoint, people are using Google's Of course search engine, which has been very, very good here over the years. They, they've just done some wonderful things. And Google has added more and more features to their browser. Now, people ask me constantly, what is it that I use? What is it that I recommend? Well, I can tell you that Craig recommends that you don't use the Chrome browser when you can avoid it. Now I do use Chrome. When I am on a website, and I'm trying to do something and one of these other browsers doesn't work quite right. I go over to Chrome because it's not the worst thing in the world. It's not as though it has a direct backdoor into Russia, at least not that we're aware of, or into the CIA or the NSA. We know that Google doesn't like to cooperate with the US military, in some of its research projects, but Google also loves to cooperate with China and has three artificial intelligence labs in China. So it's giving China our next generation of computing technology for free but won't share it with our government. Yeah. Well, anyway, I guess I do get kind of political sometimes on the show. Google's Chrome version 79 just came up with a new feature. Now you know, when it comes to password, That I highly recommend you use some software called one password. They have some free stuff, they have some paid offerings. And what one password does is it keeps all of your passwords keeps them secure. You only have to remember one password, which is, frankly a huge win. And it was great in the business environment where you can set up vaults of passwords so that you know HR can have their own vault and this software development teams can all have their own vaults, and you can have your own personal vault, and it'll create passwords for you that are highly secure, that conform to the requirements for different websites and, and you can share them within vaults. There are just all kinds of wonderful things that you can do using one password. And then if you've been around a while, a couple of years ago, you know I offered a service that we were doing internally. We did this for free for over 1000 People, but we double-checked their password to see if not passwords but email address to see if their email addresses and passwords are out on the dark web. And you know, we checked it at least a month and generated reports for people. And that might be something we decided to do in the future. Well, there is a huge database out there that we've talked about on the show before. Google has now adopted in its Chrome browser. So Chrome 79 has what they're calling as a password checkup extension. So that was what how it all started. It was for desktop versions of Chrome, and it audited your passwords when you entered them, and took a look at them to see if those passwords were known to have been breached. Now, it's not necessarily that your account was breached, although it might have been it the password in the Heres why. Here's why they looked at the password itself. What the bad guys are doing nowadays is they are comparing your password against millions, hundreds of millions, in fact, billions of known passwords that people have used. And they start with the most common passwords and then work their way out from there. So if you're using a password that has been known to been breached in the past, it isn't something you should use. So I thought that was great. They had this password checkout extension. So now what they've done is they've integrated into every Google account and on-demand audit that you can run on all of your saved passwords. And in version 79. Google has a password checkout integrated into both the desktop and mobile versions of Chrome. So what will happen now is that if you are using Chrome to save your passwords, which I do not do as a rule, except for a few accounts I don't really care about because again, I'm using one password to keep my passwords and can keep them all straight? So it is built-in now. And anytime you enter in a password, it's going to check to see if that password has been breached anywhere online. Google is calling this private set intersection, which means you don't get to see Google's list of bad credentials. And Google doesn't get to learn your credentials. But the two can be compared four matches and basically what it's doing is it's doing mild encryption on your password and comparing it against this known setup password. So it's very, very good to do. One password has this feature already built-in password will warn you if I website that you're going to has been known to have been compromised. And Google's figuring here, that since it has a big encrypted database of all your passwords, I might as well compare against, compare them against this 4 billion strong public list of compromised usernames and passwords. They've been exposed in all kinds of security breaches over the years. And little on little later on today, we're going to talk about the top half dozen or so big security breaches, what caused them and then you might want to pay attention to to see if your information was exposed. But the main reason I like to talk about this stuff is so that you can look at your position, you know, at home or at work and ask yourself, hey, listen, there is this breach something that would have worked against us, right? I think it's very, very good. So Here we go. I'm not going to get any details here on what exactly what Google is doing and how they're doing it. If you are a chrome fan, you might want to use it. So let's talk about what the alternatives to Chrome or opera is a big one. And I have heard rumors that the Opera browser, which is kind of my primary browser, I have another one will tell you about in just a second, but opera very fast. It's designed to be secure. It also blocks a lot of spyware out there. Very good. But the rumors are that it is now in the hands of the Chinese government apparently owns it. I'm not sure that's entirely true. But, you know, it's up to you whether you want to take any risks. I'll tell you also about an extension I use in all of my browsers, which makes it much more secure much safer for me. We'll probably have to wait until after the top of the hour to get into that, but I'll tell about that. So what do I use the most? And what do I trust the most? Well, Netscape, the Netscape browser. Mozilla is the next one that I use opera is number one, at least for the time being. I use Firefox as well. Both of them do a lot of blocking, oh, I have a lot of privacy enhancements. Those are the two I use the most. And then I also use Apple Safari. Apple, again, is not selling your information as Google does. So it's considered to be a little bit safer. So far, we haven't known Apple to really leak information. They've been relatively safe, they certainly aren't selling it to anyone. And that's what I use. And then if I have to all fall back to Google Now, if I wanted to be extra safe online, there is another browser out there that I do like, and it's called epic EP, I see the epic browser. And it is actually based on Google's Chrome browser underneath the hood, just as Microsoft's browser is based on Google's Chrome browser. And Google is actually using a base form from Apple's Safari browser, which is kind of interesting. They all share code nowadays. But the epic browser is the browser if you absolutely want to keep your data safe. It even has a built-in privacy VPN. So check it out as well. When we come back, I'll give you a little clue here. A couple of tips on what you can do to keep every browser just a little bit safer. We'll get into some gift ideas and more. So stick around you're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome back and listening to me on WG A in an online, Craig peterson.com. Hey, if you are a new listener, I just want to let you know a little bit about my background I've been helping to develop the internet, they in fact, just called a pie in the air you the other day, which is kind of interesting to think about. But yes, indeed, I designed and made some of the very first routers and some of the very first firewalls and load balancers and stuff back in the day. Let me tell you back in the day, we had to write these things from scratch because they just didn't exist as commercial products. And, you know, there's a lot of products I could have sold over the years but I'm just wasn't that kind of guy. Anyhow, so now I do a lot of cybersecurity for businesses, government agencies, most particularly really, for anybody in a regulated business, which today in this day and age means any business because we are all regulators I talked about in the last segment. Well, we have some gift ideas. And let me just start with one here. And then we'll get into some more articles from this week. We've we're going to be talking about the NSA here and what their top recommendation is for businesses. But you know, I am a techie guy, and I love tech and tech gifts and it's all just a pretty darn cool thing. When you get right down to it, just like, you know, I just love playing with this stuff. I guess that's the way to put it. And using it and making my life a little easier and faster, more efficient, effective, etc. But I want to talk about the high-end tech gifts that you might want to give, and you might want to give for yourself. In fact, that's exactly what I'm doing with one of these this year. Well, if you have somebody who's a gaming enthusiast, there are so many things out there that you can get for them. There's this one particular mouse that is very highly rated for gamers. It's called the razor Viper. It has some very, very fast, maneuverability stuff built in. Because of course, when you're playing some of these video games interactive, you need to be able to move very quickly so anyhow, we'll leave it at that because I am not a game type person. I used to play some, some games way back when you're in a dungeon with twisty mages, mazes, remember right how things started. But let's get into this. Now. This is one of the things I think would be a great gift for almost anyone, it's great for a computer that has the USBC which is the newest version of the USB cable. It is what the new Mac books come with the new max do as well. It's the next generation of the high-speed stuff that the last generation max had. But it also works with regular USB cable has a little adapter that you can use with it. It's called SanDisk extreme portable SSD. This thing is very, very nice. It's a good option for data you need to have with you wherever you go. It's surprisingly small. It is rated for the extremely high shock it's like 500 G's or something crazy like that. And it will withstand water and dust as well as vibration. You can drop it from six feet in the air without suffering any damage at all. This thing is amazing. And right now it is half price. Over on Amazon. Just look it up there. SanDisk is the name of the company S-A-N-D-I-S-K, it's their extreme portable SSD fits in the palm of your hand that you're going to love this. It's available in 250 gig 500 gig one terabyte and two terabytes now, I would not get the 250 gig, not that it's too small. But for an extra $10 you double your space up to 500 gig. Now when you go up to the one terabyte, which again is twice the space, it's twice the cost. So the one terabyte you're gonna have to ask yourself what makes sense and two terabyte options. But this thing is so fast, or what I love this for is to have different virtual machines on it. It's the one I use when I am doing a demo or for when I need to do a client-side install.  I can have every version of Windows on my need to use Mac OS all the different versions of that a few versions of Linux all right there on the drive. It's very very convenient. And very, very fast you're going to love this thing. In fact, that's one of the fastest portable storage solutions that has ever been tested. It's kind of similar you know you can get Samsung T five SSD, they have very good SSDs. Okay, don't get me wrong here.  The Samsung t five is more affordable but the SanDisk extreme SSD is better. Now I got to tell you that the cost right now on Amazon for this portable drive, there's no moving parts in it. As I said it fits in the palm of your hand. The cost on that is lower on Amazon right now. It's half price is lower than I can buy it from my distributors at So just to give you an idea of what a great value that is, coming up, we're going to talk about, I think the coolest gift you can give to somebody that is truly a hobbyist in the computer world, you're going to love it. And then if you are that person when you go to someone's house for Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Christmas birthdays, whatever it is, and they say, hey, Craig, come over here for a second. my computer's not working right can you have a look at it will will tell you about the best gift for somebody like that and maybe some need to get get for yourself as well. So I'm going to talk right now about some of the biggest security breaches we'll go over one and then we'll get to some others little later on in this our last hour. And by the way, if you want to listen to the whole show, my podcast and everything. You can just go to Craig Peterson comm slash iTunes or slash tune in if you'd like to listen to it. On tune in or slash pretty much anything well actually if you type in slash pretty much everything you need an error page right? But you'll find me Craig Peters on on most of the major podcast sites that are out there by just going to Craig Peterson comm slash, whatever it is like Sasha Hart or slash SoundCloud or slash tune in, etc, etc. Well, data aggregators are big targets that are out there and who is a data aggregator? Well, let me tell you about what happened when I was at a wedding last week I was staying with my sister in law my wife and I, and there we got home and there was a card in the door and there's from an insurance company members like all state or something and, and it asked for one of my sisters in law, who had been living in that house to call so we thought okay, well, it's just a hoax thing. You know, they're they're trying to sell some insurance or something. So we just ignore that fact, I think we just threw the card in the trash. Well, the next night, we were sitting there at home and there's a knock at the door. And it's the same insurance agent. And she wants to talk to my deceased sister in law. And we get into this a little bit more and talking and talking to her trying to figure out what, what, what, why, what's going on. It turns out that someone was involved in a fatal car accident. And that person gave my deceased sister in-law's identity as her own. Yes, indeed, the dead are, quite frequently in fact, a victim of identity theft. Now we know about the dead voting right particularly in Chicago, and but in other places around the country. Well, in this case, apparently according to the report - she had been involved in a fatal car wreck about six months after she had died, and someone was dead. Obviously, this was a case of mistaken identity, but the insurance lady who's at the door, and she's obviously, some sort of an investigator used one of these skip trace databases in case you're not familiar with those. These are databases that are put together by data aggregators and data aggregators are these companies that suck up data from every public source they possibly can. And even some paid sources. And it includes records from credit card companies, and you name it, they pull it all together, they try and make heads or tails of it. So she had this report from a data aggregator and listed my long-deceased father in law's name is part of this and, and my kids, couple of my kids that had at one point staying for a visit with their grandmother, for a few months, while going to school, etc. and include my wife's name, my name just kind of went on and on. They got a lot of data wrong. And that's what I found to typically 25 to 50%, sometimes even more the data they have is incorrect. But enough of it was correct that she could kind of start piecing things together. And she was able to figure out that this was insurance fraud. Well, these data aggregators have massive databases as frankly, you might imagine. And they have these databases online. Yeah, you know where I'm going. This was a Mongo DB Mongo database, which is used, it's kind of it's called NO SEQUEL. It's an unformatted database. It's perfect for these data aggregators, and a company called verifications.io. That provided email verification services, had a Mongo database Continued over 800 million records publicly accessible to anyone in the world with an internet connection. And they had four sets of data. They'd had email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, physical addresses, employer information, IP addresses, business leads and other information. Not everything was sensitive. So when we get back we'll talk about what lessons should be learned what you can pick up from this a couple of tips for you. If you are a business person of any sort, or if you have data that might be in one of these databases, so we'll talk about these big verifications Mongo DB breach from this year and some more gift ideas right area listening to Craig Peters on online and here on WGAN terrestrial radio. Craig Peterson Hello everybody Greg Peterson back here on WG and online at Craig peterson.com. If you enjoy my show, by all means, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Pretty much everything that I do goes up there my Wednesday mornings with Matt and can during their drive time show Wednesday morning that goes up there Other appearances go up there the whole radio show goes up there as well. Craig Peters on comm slash iTunes and do leave me a review if you wouldn't mind. You know those five-star reviews help get the message out. And we just passed another hundred thousand downloads, which is kind of cool. I appreciate it. Every one of you guys for listening. We try and get as much information as we can. So let's get back to our Well actually, you know There's something I forgot to button up from the last hour. Let's get to that. And then we'll get to some, some gifts and some more risks and what the NSA is saying right now, I had been talking earlier in the show about web browsers, and which browsers you should be using, which ones I recommend, then, you know, if you missed all of that, again, you will find it at Craig peterson.com, slash iTunes, you can listen to the whole thing right there. But I was talking a little bit about a plugin that I use. This is a plugin that works with pretty much any browser out there and works differently than any plugin that you might have been familiar with before. This is from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Now I've had my disagreements with them in the past. Overall, I agree with a lot of what they're doing. But this is a plugin that goes into Chrome Opera or Firefox or pretty much anything that is called Privacy Badger Privacy Badger. So think about badgers if you know these things, they you'll find them a lot over in England, but they're over here too. They burrow underneath hedges and they like to live in the ground. And they are mean they will fight anything way bigger than they are. They don't care. They're going to win because they go all in. Well, that's what this is all about Privacy Badger. So I am on a website. Right now I'm looking at my browser and the Privacy Badger plugin, and it's got a nine on it right now. So what that means is that Privacy Badger detected nine potential trackers on this web page that I'm on right now. And it has sliders for them up there and it says you shouldn't need to adjust the sliders unless something is broken. So what Privacy Badger does is it watches you As you go to different websites, it looks at the cookies that are placed on your browser from these websites and determines, Hey, wait a minute. Now, this is a cross-site tracker. This is another type of tracker that we probably don't want to have. So it's showing them all to me. So here we go. Here's what I have right now on this website that I'm on. And the website is otter in case you don't use otter it is phenomenal transcription service, very inexpensive. 600 minutes for free every month. otter.ai but it turns out otter is using some tracker. So the first tracker showing me that Privacy Badger blocked is graph.facebook.com. So this is Facebook gathering data about me what I do where I go, the next one that's marked yellow, which is it has three different indications here on the slider. One is a blocks it entire The next one is that it could block cookies and then the far right one is to allow a domain to do it. So graph.facebook.com was blocked automatically static.facebook.com was allowed the regular facebook.com was allowed Google Analytics completely blocked API's Google com was allowed stripe checkout was allowed stripe as a payment service. JavaScript on stripe com was allowed and stripe network usually m dot means it's a mobile site. So that was blocked and Q dot stripe com was allowed but those are tagged the one these all of the ones I mentioned that were tagged, are considered to caution level. So by adding Privacy Badger as a plugin to any of your browsers Basically is going to stop sites from tracking you and it does a very good job. It learns as you go. It is not something that is prefixed with I'm going to block this site or that site. It is absolutely dynamic. I really, really like it. So check that out. This is kind of a flashback, as I said to an earlier segment where I was talking about which browser to use, what the considerations are. And this will work with any of them out there. So just do a search for Privacy Badger, it should come up near the top of your DuckDuckGo search. And it's five the Electronic Frontier Foundation e FF, check it out online. Okay, so now let's get into gifts again. I mentioned my top gift recommendation in the last segment. This one is for total geeks. Now we are using this for actually keeping timing tracking It's called raspberry pi. So we have a special card that goes along with this that has a GPS antenna attached to it and GPS readers so that we can track the satellites in the sky. We use the timing that they provide us with, we do some advertising. So that one of the things we do for our clients is we have to track their logs and keep real detailed records on their logs. We need to know exactly when Did something happen? So that if after the fact heaven forbid, someone gets in, some piece of malware gets in when did it come in? Where did it go? What did it do, right? Because you want to be able to know after the fact Well, what does it get access to? unlike so many of these companies that have no idea what they lost? In fact, most businesses don't even know until six months later that they were even the hack versus what the best in the biz are doing right now is about six hours, not just to detected but to remediation, which is where we sit well, usually within that six-hour time frame. Well, this is called a Raspberry Pi. And they've got the newest version of Raspberry Pi four. This is a small Linux computer. So if anybody that you know likes to hack together science projects or you know, do a little bit of experimenting, this is phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. You can turn it into a retro game console, it'll play a lot of these old video games. A smart speaker that's a DIY thing. You can build it into your Legos to make a real fancy remote-controlled car. Anything your hobbyist mind comes into mind. This is phenomenal. You can for 100 less than 100 bucks, you can get a complete kit. Okay? The Raspberry Pi fours a lot faster and the older Raspberry Pi three Model B plus faster CPU you can put up to four gigs of ram in this thing. It is a phenomenal USB 3.0 port. So if you are or you know somebody that's really into DIY hobbies, this is the way to go. Okay? The Raspberry Pi four does get closer to your general and genuine desktop PC performance. But it's not really there yet. It's not one running Windows, it does run Linux, as I mentioned. And you can write basic programs for it, which is a programming language Python. If you have a kid that wants to learn Python, this might be a nice way for them to learn because they can kind of hack it together but it's just it's basically just a motherboard, you're gonna have to put it in a case by a case forward, you're gonna have to put a keyboard on it. A mouse, you have to put a display on it, okay, all kinds of stuff, but you can get just the basic Raspberry Pi four For someone that that really, really is a total hacker here, for like 4050 bucks, it's absolutely amazing. Okay, plenty of power for your money. Very versatile. In fact, it's more versatile in many ways than your Windows PC is. And for the budding engineer in your life, they will love you for it. So stick around, we're going to come back, I've got some more ideas for tech gifts that you might like. And we're going to talk about a couple more big hacks this year, and what it means to you. We've got third party security risks, the NSA has some advice for business and we'll tell you about that too. When we get back, you're listening to Craig Peterson right here on w GAN and online at Craig Peter song.com. That's Peterson with an O. Stick around because we'll be right back. Craig Peterson Hello, everybody, welcome back, Craig Peters on here on WGAN. And we're talking about stuff we usually talk about, you know, some of the security things, some of the latest technology that's out there. We're also doing a bit of a recap here some great gift ideas for the techie people in your life, even frankly, some of the non-techie people. And the security side, which is, I think, very important, can't talk enough about that. Because it could destroy your company, it could ruin that, frankly, the rest of your life could be a bit of misery, depending on what the bad guys do to you. Oh, it's absolutely crazy. told the story a little earlier of what happened with my deceased sister in law's identity, and how it was used in a fatal car accident and it's just it's amazing what some of these people are. Doing nowadays. And by the way, one of the most valuable segments of our population. We are know already about the retired people, the older people, right, who might be a little confused, hopefully, have some assets. But one of the most valuable identities out there online is that they have a child because their social security number and their identity are going to be very useful for at least a decade, if not longer because those kids probably not going to use it until they get their first job. So keep that in mind as well. Well, I want to get into these two things before the last half hour, so we'll cover these fairly quickly. But the big one, and that is waking up to third party security risks. Now one of the big attacks this year was Capital One and that's on my list of the ones I wanted to talk about today. They had personal information blog into overall hundred million US individuals and 6 million Canadian residents. Now, this was exposed. And when a former employee at Amazon Web Services inappropriately accessed the data, we could get into all of the real details behind this but the compromised information included names addresses, dates of birth, credit scores, payment history, contact information, and other information on people who had applied for Capital One credit card dating back to 2005. also exposed where the social security numbers of 140,000 individuals and bank account data blogging belonging to 80,000 secured credit card customers. So think about this for a little minute here. How many of us are using a service like Amazon Web Services, how many of us are relying on cloud services to keep our information safe? Right? Frankly, that's most of us, isn't it? And when you're talking about somebody like Amazon Web Services, or now there's Microsoft Azure, those are kind of the two really big players. IBM also has its cloud online that they sell access to. Most businesses look at it as a way to save money. Most businesses consider, hey, I don't need to keep track of the security, because my vendor is keeping track of it for me. And what we found out is, that's not true. So the lessons learned here. We'll start with that here from Capital One is that cloud service may be attractive because it's cheaper than doing it yourself. And that's particularly true, frankly, throughout the whole range, but it's particularly true for large businesses, but even for small business. businesses, can you really afford the right kind of server? Now I know a lot of small businesses go to the local staples store and buy a computer and call it a server, right? And maybe $800,000 later, they're out of there. Whereas a real server that's going to be really reliable is going to last years, you should be looking at more like 15 to $20,000 for. So businesses say, well, I'll just do it in the cloud. I'll use Amazon Web Services for this and we'll hire a consultant who's going to help us set it up. And we're going to use maybe Dropbox for that and maybe office 365 for this and now all of a sudden, I'm safe. Well, you're not. And companies, you guys are putting your data at risk, because you haven't adopted a security infrastructure, with the vigor that you need to apply. It should be at least as good as what You're using for your on-premise stuff. But you know what so many SMEs aren't even doing it right for on-premise stuff. Okay? So you're ending up with all of the financial cost of the penalties that you rack up, and the lawsuit and the cost of those lawsuits, which will vastly outweigh any it savings that you might have down the road. So keep that in mind. And that's what Capital One just learned this year. The Why? Because we're not taking third party security risk to heart Ponemon Institute did a study here 2018 founded 60% of customers surveyed, had suffered a data breach caused by third parties or vendors in the last 12 months. So what's causing it? Well, these applications are being built very different than they were a decade ago. They are online. They're using APIs. And they are not considering the security risks. So all services are connecting internally and externally via these APIs, popular finance websites load on your browser mobile apps, you can see the results. Dozens of third party services, okay, web apps, middleware, other code. This is a real problem. So, protect your own infrastructure, Step number one. Step number two demanded the others protect their infrastructure, okay. And trust yet verify. What we do is we wrap special security software around all of these third party infrastructure Software-as-a-Service sites that are out there, okay. So be very, very careful and you have to test even more for third party sites and you know, businesses just aren't testing as much as they should. So there you go. There's a couple of tips here three tips on what to do. When you are talking about third party security risk, and that is with all of these guys, Okay, number one, make sure your infrastructure is protected that you have the right kinds of firewalls and you have the right kind of malware treatment that's in place. All the other security controls, make sure they're configured right? If you're using something like Amazon Web Services, or Sure, or office 365, make sure you have the right settings. You know, it's difficult I get it, Microsoft has over 10,000 skews 10,000 products that are available in they're all software and services. There are dozens and dozens just for office 365 based systems. So make sure you have the right stuff. Make sure that they have proper compliance and certifications. And remember too that the certifications they have just represented a point in time. Do they still have the right kind of security? And because we are running our technology in this new type of infrastructure, make sure, frankly, that we keep track of everything because a breach can happen quickly do millions of dollars of damages right away. And 20% of businesses will file for bankruptcy the very next day. All right, well, let's talk about another gift here real quick before we go to a quick break. And this is for those of us that we go to a family event, and we go anywhere, and it's a Craig come over here for a minute, I need some help and you go over there and of course, it's questions and problems about their computers. So here's what I recommend. Get that person in your life if they're fixing the computer for that for you. I fix it. Great site painting Go online to find out how to fix physical problems. But they have something called the I fix it pro tech tool kit. I have one of these my kids have one of these. My technicians in my business have one of these. It's a 64-bit driver set that has all these weird types of sockets and everything on them. Because these parts and the computers that have the special locking screws and everything else, you need this Okay, the I fix it pro tech tool kit. Stick around. We'll be back with a wrap up for today's show. And we'll talk a little bit more about some gifts right here. You're listening to Craig Peterson on w GN. And the course online Craig Peterson calm. Stick around because we'll be right back. Craig Peterson Hello everybody Craig Peterson here WGAN and online at, of course, Craig Peterson dot com. Hope you've enjoyed the show today we have covered a lot of different things we talked about third party security risks for businesses which web browser you should be using. If you want to keep safe and some of the updates that Chrome has from Google, they'll keep you safer online. What not to do on your work computer. Why it's still too early to buy a 5g phone and signature antivirus and how it is at best catching 50% of the malware out there. It's getting really, really bad. And we've talked a little bit about some of the top breaches this year and there are some pretty scary Ones out there. But how does it apply to you? And how does it apply to your business as well? And we got one more that was brought up on the website at Craig Peterson calm, you can see all of these up there, a little bit of mind commentary and links to other articles online. But this is about the NSA and what the NSA, the National Security Agency is saying that we should be doing as businesses, but this applies 100% as well, to you as an individual. And the basics are to focus on your assets. And this is a very, very big deal. W

Welcome! Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and he'd been talking a lot about recycling and recycled bags and stuff because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is right now considering legislation that would black ban all plastic bags throughout the state. And of course, they're not really considering implications. But we got into Google and they are now using a vacuum truck to grab all of our medical records and our personal information along with it. So, here we go with Mr. Polito. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Related articles: Big Tech Has Your Private Medical Records -- Through Hospital Partnerships    ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson 0:00 Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I don't know if you've seen them yet. But I've got a couple of Facebook Lives up on my page. You can go there just from my website, Craig Peterson dot com slash Facebook. But you can find me if you poke around a little bit. And I have been kind of explaining some of the technology that business people small business people need to know and be aware of and understand. So check those out if you haven't already. And shout out to everybody. I had a few people comment. Basically, they listened to all of my podcasts from last week, which amounted to more than two hours uninterrupted. And that was a lot of Craig. Hey, I appreciate you guys listening and subscribing. It does get the word out which is really good. We are building momentum again on the podcast over 100,000 here recently sold that's all downloads. That's all really really good and I appreciate you guys, buddy. up with me and asking questions too. That's how I get a lot of the source materials as I kind of explain the latest in technology, and more particularly some of the latest in the security realm as well. This morning I was on with Mr. Polito. He'd been talking a lot about recycling and recycled bags and stuff because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is right now considering legislation that would black ban all plastic bags throughout the state. And of course, they're not really considering implications. But we got into Google and they are now using a vacuum truck to grab all of our medical records and our personal information along with it. So that's what we chatted about this morning. Jim Polito 1:52 Here we go. This man is incredible. Incredible. Hey, who was A guy who said the next frontier of cyber hacking and everything else you have to worry about is your record your healthcare record, Craig Peterson said in our tech talk crew, and he joins us now. Good morning, Craig. Craig Peterson 2:16 Hey, good morning, Jim. You know, if people are worried about recycling plastic bags, when you walk into any Target, WalMart, almost any of these big-box retailers right inside, there is a recycle box that you can put your plastic bags into. Yeah, problem solved.  Jim Polito 2:37 Yeah. It's everybody being responsible. And it's not our fault that the oceans are filled with that stuff. But anyway, let's get on to the Google monster and something that you are the first really to sound the alarm on quite a while ago. It was Hey, the new frontier is not going to be your financial record. It's going to be your healthcare record. We find out that the folks, the good folks at Google are swallowing up our, our information. Should I be worried, Craig Peterson? Craig Peterson 3:16 Yeah, here's the thing that you know, we talked about it in January 2018. I remember it well, years ago for the Wayback Machine. It is it is. And it was because our medical records are so valuable. And I was saying back then actually kind of late 2017 that really our medical records are going to be the next frontier of the bad guy stealing them you remember, of course, these HIPAA regulations went in place 30 years ago now. And the main idea behind them was that hey, your records gonna be portable gym when you do your Snowbird emulation and end up in Florida for two weeks. middle of winter and you have to see a doctor, the doctor down there would be able to look at your electronic medical records from up here in Worcester, right. That's the whole idea. Listen, Jim Polito 4:12 I think that's great portability of a medical record, controls, costs, improves quality of healthcare, all of that. I'm on board for that. Craig Peterson 4:23 But, the other side of this was before HIPAA regulations went into place if someone was to share your medical records with someone else, did not have a direct interest, like another doctor. It was illegal, they could get into trouble you could sue them for privacy violations. But HIPAA made it possible for medical companies, doctors, everybody else, to share your records in an unfettered way. While it's all For instance, if I wanted to look at every record that UMass has every medical record or you know, you name a hospital, and I'm in collusion with that hospital, I could just easily say, Hey, listen, I'm thinking about buying you guys. I want to see the medical records of every patient you've had. And they could give them to me. Yeah. Now, here's what's happening. With our friends at Google. We've got something called Project Nightingale. You might remember that woman from a little while back, I think was her first name was Florence. Jim Polito5:34 A wonderful lady. Unknown Speaker 5:37 Exactly. She helped so many men and women and just saved lives. So, Google has Project Nightingale underway now. And Google has partnered with and this is the part I'm having a little bit of a hard time swallowing. They're partnering with a group called Ascension which is a big health care conglomerate really but company here in the United States. And this is the part that I just don't understand here, Ascension is a Catholic nonprofit health system includes  34,000 providers 2600 hospitals, doctors' offices, other facilities. 21 states plus the District of Columbia. Google and Ascension have partnered and Ascension has apparently without even notification to the patient, has apparently shared these medical records that they have with our friends at Google. The Wall Street Journal has a report out there saying that this information contains patient names birth dates, a complete medical records, as well and according to the Wall Street Journal, what's been happening here is that Ascension has not only fed them data that they already had about all of these patients. But when you go in and you're checking in all of that information, when you are sitting there upfront is being fed directly into Google. When the doctors are evaluating their case, it's being sent directly to Google, as well. It's all under the HIPAA regulations, which many people think somehow provides them with more privacy. But certainly, in this case, and in many others, has taken away not only your privacy, but you're rights, and the need to even notify you. So, this is very concerning. And Google is saying, Hey, listen, it's only 150 of our employees that get to see this. Show me your diagnosis, laboratory test results and hospitalization records. You know, don't worry about it. What could go wrong here? Jim Polito 8:02 I'd love that. That's always the line. I think they said that on the Hindenburg. What could go wrong here? It's just hydrogen. Craig Peterson 8:09 What could go wrong? It's just a small, small coal fire in the hold of our Titanic ship. Jim Polito 8:18 Big deal, knock it off. Don't be such a worrier. Craig Peterson 8:22 Right? Exactly. So this is 10s of millions of Americans that are affected by this. And what they're trying to do. What this project is trying to do is to make it so that they get better diagnoses, better outcomes, ultimately, because all those information is being sucked up by Google's been analyzed and apparently. The doctors are unaware of this happening in these Catholic and other hospitals. But Google is providing them these doctors with some recommendations about treatments and diagnoses as well. Jim Polito 9:00 Okay, well wait a minute. We're talking with our good friend Craig Peterson. And you probably heard in the news about Google and this foray into medical records. All right. Look, I know someone whose son is working on a research project, and it's in relation to breast cancer. And it involves a giant cloud calculation of putting in data of all of these different people who had breast cancer diagnosed with breast cancer. And, and the mission is to find out something that was common at the time of diagnosis and what was different prior to diagnosis. Basically, what they're looking for is what was the switch that was thrown that started this cancer, okay, so then massive amounts of data, and I get that. But that data is all protected from matching it up with an individual. I mean, many of these individuals could be dead. This is a massive amount of data. I get that, Craig, but I'm worried about. And I don't have a problem with Google and other big, big firms working on this. What I do have a problem with is, how do I know this is protected? How do I know this isn't going to be used against me? Craig Peterson 10:35 Well, one only needs to look at the NIH to get an answer to that question. Of course, you know what that is? Jim Polito 10:43 Yeah, is that in Canada. Craig Peterson 10:44  No. That's The National Health Service over in the United Kingdom, okay. Yeah, and this is socialized medicine. And in all of these countries, they have death panels, and they're trying to Figure out, is it worth spending any money on this patient? Basically, if you're under 10 years old or over 50 years old, the answer to that question is no. But here's what they've done over in the UK. They have taken this type of data now. And they're using computers to determine whether or not they should just let you die. Literally, let you die. Yeah, if they should treat you at all. That's where this ultimately leads. I love the idea of, you know, having this robust data set, improving outcomes, reducing costs, saving lives, that's what they really want to do. That's why the Catholic Church and ascension got into this. Ultimately, this is for the good. But Jim, this is another example of the government telling us that HIPAA is going to make our information more private, safer, and is done the exact opposite. None of these things People had to opt-in. None of these people were even notified that it was happening, let alone a chance to opt-out of it. Okay. And that's where some of the problems come in. And when you're talking about this massive amount of data, you talked about the anonymizing that happened, yeah. So you can identify an individual in this case, obviously they could, because thinking the names and addresses, but even with anonymized data, where all they have is a number associated with the record and no other information like your name or address, it's been proven again and again, that it can be D anonymize very, very easily in most cases. So we'll see what happens. But the President of Google Cloud came out with a statement and, and you know, bless these guys, they're trying to do the right thing. But Google just you know, this whole deal to buy bit fit. We're now giving our instant cardiac readings on Exercise readings are sleep readings, everything else to Google Now. And it is starting to show up in our employment records and in and in the socialized medicine component countries. It's helping to decide whether or not they're going to treat you. Not just how to treat you. Jim Polito 13:19 All right, Craig, this is great information. I know you have a lot of other stuff, but I wanted to focus on this. I know that if folks text My name to this number, they can get that information. Craig Peterson 13:34 855-385-5553 I'll send a link out to this article today. But txt to 855-385-5553 Jim Polito 13:19 Standard data and text rates apply. And Craig Peterson will not annoy you. He'll get you this information. And other great stuff. Craig, thank you so much. It was very helpful and we will talk to you next week. Craig Peterson 13:58 Thanks again, Jim. Jim Polito 13:19 Right. When we return something incredible. Transcribed by https://otter.ai ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson  

Welcome!   Today there is a ton of stuff going on in the world of Technology and we are going to hit a number of topics from being aware of fake sexual harassment claims being used to mask malware to the advantages and disadvantages of future military technology, and why everyone should be using multi-factor authentication -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Don’t Take The Bait - Fake Sexual Harassment Claims Can You Detect A Phishing Attempt? Vulnerability in Popular Anti-Virus Program Bots Losing Panache as Cybercriminals Hire In Third World Not If, But When -- Don’t Think You Are Not A Target Big Tech Has Your Private Medical Records -- Through Hospital Partnerships    Future Defense and Military Tech Best Practices in Authentication Still Mostly Ignored By Businesses --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson 0:05 Hello everybody! Craig Peterson here. Welcome. Welcome, you are listening to me on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks for joining me. Today we are going to be talking about some of the most important things that are happening in technology as we do every week and more particularly what's going on in this security realm. We'll talk about how you can detect if it's a phishing site that you have gone to, New malware from TrikBot here, a brand new one. Some complaints here about McAfee. Every piece of anti-virus software McAfee makes has vulnerabilities. We'll talk about that major, major security problem. We've got an accounting fraud here and how it's getting harder to detect and Why we have breaches? You know, I talked to so many people, I have a lot of customers, a lot of business customers. And they're sitting there saying, Well, you know, this is all inevitable. So what should I do about that? We'll talk about that. Google, you might have heard of project Nightingale. We'll get to that today as well. Defense firms are on track to make some very, very scary hardware. We'll talk about that as well as some of the myths of multi-factor authentication. And there are a lot of myths out there about all kinds of this security stuff, frankly, but let's start with our friends at Microsoft. I bet you thought I was going to say Apple, didn't you? Well, we had a big patch day, Patch Tuesday, and it fixed 13 critical flaws this week, and one zero-day vulnerability. Let's start by explaining what a zero-day is. In this case, we're talking about a zero-day attack, which refers to a vulnerability that is undetectable by any current antivirus software or anti-malware software that has seen this particular problem before. Now you noticed that made a difference a distinction between anti-virus and anti-malware, right? Because anti-virus software behaves in a certain way. Anti-malware behaves well, frankly, a little bit differently. So what are the pros? What are the cons? What's the difference between antivirus and anti-malware? Well, as a general rule here, anti-virus is a subset of anti-malware. Anti-virus is something that we're doing now will probably continue to do forever. Still, it does not catch me. Most of the nastiness that's out there today, anti-virus is you know, at best release Some people would say zero percent effective, but I give it the kind of the benefit of the doubt. And it's about 20% effective. So if you have antivirus software, it's only useful about 20% of the time against all of these different types of attacks, it's probably close to 10%. If you pull in the human element into all of this, anti-malware software behaves a lot differently than antivirus software. Some of it is whitelisting, where it knows this is a legitimate piece of software that was not modified. So it allows it to run that on one side. These are quite difficult to keep up to date because you have to continually monitor what's going on in what the software upgrades are. What the checksums of that new version of the software are, their libraries, are they all legitimate all those DLL files and everything else they're using. It gets pretty darn complicated from the whitelist listing side. And there's a couple of companies that do whitelist. Some of them, frankly, do better than others. Craig Peterson 4:07 Some of them, in reality, isn't even really doing whitelisting when you get right down to it. And then there is the next level up, which is the anti-malware software. And anti-malware is software that looks at the behavior typically of what's going on. And there are there's software out there right now malware this designed to fool the anti-malware software to so it looks at it and says, Okay, this just installed Wait a minute, started opening a bunch of files. Wait a minute, is writing to a bunch of files. Wait a minute, and it's changing all these file names. That's the type of behavior that would be typical of ransomware. Good anti-malware software looks at the behavior of a program as it is opening all kinds of part the TCP/IP packets, that are trying to use a network to get to all of these other computers that are out there on the network. What is it doing? How is it doing? Why is it doing all of that? That's good anti-malware software. So it will do all of that it looks at checksums, it looks at just all kinds of things. And it typically has about a 10% performance penalty on your computer, and it can be a little bit higher than that. But it's they're busy looking at everything, examine everything trying to figure out what to do. So we have anti-malware software out there, as well as anti-virus. Those are the two significant types of software you'll put on to your computers. And frankly, anti-malware like well we use has multiple layers of software, and it ties into external databases and, and Cisco Telos to get updates and everything else. So that's what we use us what we do. So, in this case, we're talking about a zero-day Hack against some of this Microsoft software. So what does that mean? Well, that means that we're as of right now, none of the antivirus software knows how to detect this as a virus, none of it. That's zero-day, it's day zero. So tomorrow will be zero-day plus one, right? So day one of this out in the wild. And Microsoft, with their Patch Tuesday, decided they would plug 73 security vulnerabilities in their software products, including 13 of them, given the top level of a critical security vulnerability. And I guess it's kind of fortunate that this month only one of the flaws is known to be exploited. And this is a CV, that's what they're called that scripting engine vulnerability and Internet Explorer, and the sooner they get rid of Internet Explorer entirely, the better off everybody lives. Everybody's lives will be IE; they built it into the kernel so that they could have more control over it. You might remember the lawsuit against Microsoft saying, Oh, you can't ship a web browser that's integrated right into the kernel. Because now, you make it so that none of the other web browsers can work on internet XP on Windows, which was right in the very beginning. And you're blocking us out of there, and thereby it's anti-competitive, you know, it's all true. Now, IE because it's inside all these versions of Windows, these vulnerabilities can affect users who are no longer even using Internet Explorer at all. In other words, you don't have to launch the browser. You don't have to go out to the internet. You could get nailed on it right away. Okay. Now Microsoft Office is using the same rendering engine that has this vulnerability that internet access Laura has, and it can be embedded and in fact, triggered by an active x control on a booby-trapped web page. Active x is one of the worst things Microsoft could have ever done. It's right up there with some of the vulnerabilities and flash and Java. You know, are you kidding me you allow a web page to run code on a machine. And they at least they have markers on it, but it can be Mark now was safe for installation. The whole thing's crazy. I still don't understand Microsoft, and what they're doing here. Craig Peterson 8:36 So bottom line, make sure you do your update. I checked right before I went on air, and there aren't any significant problems that have been found with the updates here for November from our friends at Microsoft. They're often are. We also had this week, and some more patches come out from our friends, my friends, and yours from Intel. Now Intel makes a lot of the computer chips that are inside our computers, mainly for using a Windows machine. But Macs use Intel chips to, although they don't have to, I don't know why Apple went with Intel, you know, my guess was it was less expensive. And Intel also had some outstanding power performance numbers saw, you know, I can't blame them. But we have a bunch of patches that came out from Intel, that make all of their CPUs almost every processor they've made in the modern era is entirely vulnerable. Craig Peterson 9:39 And that's a terrible thing, including vulnerable not just on your desktop, but vulnerable in all kinds of operating systems and data centers. So, if you think hey, listen, I went ahead, and we moved all of our stuff to the cloud. They are just taking care of because it's in the cloud. Microsoft knows what they're doing. The answer to that is, well, they kind of know what they're doing. But they're stuck with this Intel vulnerability. There will be more patches coming out according to the people that found these vulnerabilities in every model of Intel CPU, Major, major, vulnerabilities. According to these people, there are more than Intel hasn't passed on yet for whatever reason. It's really, it's kind of crazy, frankly. So we got Microsoft patches for some major ones. This week. We've got Intel patches, some major ones this week, we've got Adobe patches that are out as well. So make sure you do the upgrades. I'm not going to go into all the details here. Man Adobe light set of patches this month only 11 security vulnerabilities from Adobe and Adobe Bridge, animate illustrator, and Media Encoder. Two months in a row where there are no patches for Flash Player. I'm not sure what that's about if they keep happening with flash player or if something else is going on. All right, stick around. We're going to be right back. You, of course, listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN, make sure you visit me online at Craig Peterson dot com. We've had a few pop-up-trainings already. I'm doing some Facebook Lives and getting information out, and you'll only find out about them if you're on my regular email list. Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and all of today's articles are up there as well. And there's a sign up right there too. So make sure you sign up to find out about all of the latest that you need to know. Craig peterson.com, when we come back, we're going to talk about chick bought something new going on out there trying to get us to do something we just shouldn't be doing. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 12:02 Hey, welcome back, everybody. Craig Peterson here, little beach music. I was out for the last week and a half out at a conference in Phoenix, Well I guess isn't exactly near the beaches is it, but it was sure nice and warm. And then I got back home, and you know what's happening up here in the northeast? Yeah, a little bit of cold weather. Some of it's a little too cold for my liking. You know, it just came on so fast. We were like in the 60s and 70s. And then all of a sudden it's like the 30s and 40s. I don't know what's going on. Well, let's talk about this TrikBot. It is a new malware that's out there. I've spoken to many times here on the show about what the FBI has been warning businesses, which is the business email compromise. You probably heard of that before bc we're talking about something that's cost businesses. Well over 10 billion, I think it's over $14 billion now. And we're not just talking about a little waste of time. No, we're talking about these guys and gals going right after our business bank accounts. And the way they do it is they're kind of sneaky about it, they get and get you to, to basically for the money, right to wire the money to do other things that are going to hurt your business. You may not realize it at the time, and they're just trying to fool you. Right. So how do you fool someone? And I know I know you can't fool an honest man. I've heard that so many times in the past, and there's a lot of truth to that. But here's what they're starting to do now. And you might have gotten one of these. I have had several listeners reach out to me. I and quite a few saying hey, I just got this email chain that, you know it's it's got a video of me visiting this, this nasty website out there right so you guys are probably heard about that one before it's been around a little while. Well, now what's happening is they are sending an email that appears to come from the US Equal Opportunity Commission. This email is saying that wait a minute here, and we have a sexual harassment complaint against you. Now I understand as a business owner, how this can be kind of crazy. And I owned a building, a business office that I had my business running out of, little more than 20 years, maybe a little longer. Ago now. And that business office, I put in doors, and all of the doors were floor to ceiling glass because I didn't want anybody saying that I was harassing somebody or doing something illegal. Now, of course, I, you know, we didn't have microphones and cameras and things. But I just wanted everyone to feel reasonably comfortable that no one was going to corner anybody. And, you know, I think I was kind of mostly successful about that one of these days or forever sitting down having a beer, you might want to ask me what happened there. But anyway, this is something called Trikbot, and it's a banking Trojan. And it's going after employees of large companies. And it's trying to scare these employees into thinking that the US equal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EOC is coming after them. And they are trying to get them to and are being reasonably successful in having them handing over sensitive information. And they're using a bunch of different social engineering techniques, including malicious payloads or redirecting them to fraudulent sites they control by emails that look like coming by somebody they trust, etc. Okay? Now, these spearfishing emails, and I'll read you the text in one here in just a minute here. But they, what they end up doing is dropping a malicious payload on to your computer. And as part of this campaign, these malware operators use the information they've collected from people, such as their names that company they work for job titles, phone numbers, to customize these phishing emails to make them a lot more convincing. Now think about your business and your business's website and other information that you're making available to the public. Digital website has, who the officers of the corporation are. Craig Peterson 17:04 Now I know that all of us for our businesses, we have to file with the state chapter file with the IRS and various other things. But when it comes to the state, those records tend to be public. So people can go online, they can find out who the President is, who the officers of the corporation are, who the Registered Agent is, etc., etc. Right? And so now a bad guy can go online and find out almost anything they want to find out about a smaller company because it's right there on the website. Now is that easy or what? Now let's go into one of these pieces of email. Everything from the email subject This is from bleeping computer dot com. Everything from the email subject and the message content to the malicious attachment. Each of these mouse spam email Males comes containing the potential victim's name. Now I'm looking at it here. It's got a form, and it seems like it's legit. It has the logo of what I assume is the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because it looks official enough to me, and the title at the top is the U.S. Equal Opportunity employment commission harassment complaint. Then the complete submission of a complainant form has initiated an intake interview with an EOC officer. Okay, this is what they're sending out right now. It looks very, very legitimate. And they use the name of the victim with a grievance raised against you. That's a subject for each of the phishing emails, and they're trying to get you to pay attention. They also have a customized email body to instill a sense of urgency. So it'll say, dear name of the victim, private and confidential. One of your co-workers has lodged a complaint with the EEOC. Now on top of it, all the malicious attachments, drop TrikBot payloads also have customized names. And again, it's the name of the victim-dash harassment complaint letter, and it's got a phone number on it. The entire purpose is to get you to open that attachment. And by adding this personal touch to the phishing emails, they've been increasing their chance of people opening them. Now, you know, I do a little bit of marketing for some of the courses that we offer and, and for some of the other services, you know, like the security services that we offer the businesses, so I've studied some of the marketing stuff that's out there. And I can tell you right now, most people, if you get an email that looks like that are not opening it. If you're concerned about a particular email and you have listened to my show for the last 20 plus years. You're very, very worried about it and legitimately so. Craig Peterson 20:10 So I'm not sure just how effective this is, you know, spam emails right now have an open rate of about, well, it's less than 1%. Legitimate emails have an open rate of, you know, as much as 15 to 20%. So I don't know how well they're doing. But when they're sending out 10's or hundreds of millions of emails, we're talking about some pretty darn serious stuff here. A lot of potential victims. These are highly targeted and regularly updated. That goes into some of the problems with antivirus software we will talk about later on. And that is if it hasn't seen that before, it's going to get tricked. This spear-phishing campaign delivers the malware payload. It's evolving. It's a banking Trojan. The purpose is to get you to give some banking information out. And apparently, it's been pretty successful. By the way, it's been in the wild since October 2016, one of the most aggressive pieces of malware that are out there right now. Stick around. When we come back, we'll be talking about McAfee's antivirus software and what's going on with that. Especially as it relates to some of the malware that's spreading out there in the world, right now. Make sure you are on my email list. So you keep up to date with everything that's going on. Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe. I'll let you know about the pop-up-trainings. I want you to pay close attention because I'm not going to hound you about this stuff. And we've had a lot of people attending them. They're free. Usually, they have two-hours worth of content and questions and answers. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 22:05 Hey, everybody, welcome back. Hey, did you see this? It was an announcement by one of the investment firms saying that Tesla might be missing the boat when it comes to electric cars? You know, we've all thought Tesla was the leader in the in that isn't so many ways right and built their battery factory. They've been just doing all kinds of amazing things, but it looks like they might be losing a little bit of an edge when it comes to the overall electric car business. Because now you've got Ford and GM, the major US manufacturers, I think Chrysler as well. I know Ford and GM both have some major stuff going on, as well as the Japanese firms like the Nissan LEAF. That's been all-electric for a long time, although Nissan stops making the thing some of these us manufacturers are definitely in the middle of it all. And you probably heard me a couple of weeks ago talking about some of the real risks when it comes to Tesla electric cars, particularly in the event of an accident. It's a scary thing. Frankly, it's a frightening thing being involved with the MS for all of those years to think about it. Well, we spoke a little bit in the last segment about this TrikBot malware using fake sexual harassment complaints as bait. We started off the hour talking about Patch Tuesday, and 13 critical fixes for Microsoft software, this critical fixes out for Adobe software, you got to apply these patches. According to the stats I've seen. There are, on average, about 65% of Windows computers that do not get updated at all. If this is you if you're one of those people, I urge you to spend a few minutes, let's make sure that the machines are updated. I know some people that say forget about it. I'm just going to replace my computer when it's just so far out of date. I know some people have done that with cars, too. I had a good friend I haven't talked to in years. But he was telling me that his dad did the math, back in the day, many many years ago. His dad did the math, and he figured that if he paid for oil changes throughout the life of an engine just wasn't worth it. So he said, Hey, listen. What did an engine cost back in the day it was a couple of grand for a boxed engine, and he was a mechanic he could quickly put in a new engine. And if I pay for oil, filters and my time to change the oil I will pass the break-even point at about 30,000 miles. So, in 30,000 miles, it was cheaper to replace the entire engine, than to pay for years of oil changes. Can you imagine that? So I did some quick mental math, and I agreed with him. He said, Listen, it's not as though I don't have oil in the engine. The engine will run off this known oil in it. But all I do is add oil when it needs oil added, and he never changed his oil. And at about 50 to 80,000 miles, you'd have to replace his engine. So he figured he was ahead of the game. Nowadays, with these new engines and filters and oils and the oil is just so thin. Nowadays. They're saying 10,000 miles give or take between oil changes, so it's not anywhere near as bad. Plus, some of the cars today will tell you, hey, I know Need an oil change? So you don't even have to keep track of the miles, you know, used to be 3000 miles. Do you remember you might not be old enough to remember, but the oil did not have the cleaners in it now, nowadays they have been detergents because your engines would get all sludgy? And what a mess ever take one of those apart, even just the head of the engine, the mess that was in there, we don't have those problems nowadays. Well, some people have taken that whole idea of, hey, it's cheaper to change the engine than it is to change my oil. They've taken that to the extreme. But you know, it is not like that when it comes to computers. You can't just have the laptop sitting on your desk or under your office and leave it there for years to come and say, Hey, listen, when it breaks down, I'll replace it. I'm not going to bother doing upgrades of my software won't work because it's running Windows XP, or whatever some old version of Windows, I'll go out to one of these, big-box retailers, and buy another computer and throw this one away. Craig Peterson 27:14 That is a very, very bad idea. Craig Peterson 27:16 And I suspect that's where some of the 65% of people come in, that are not maintaining their computers. Now you have to keep them because unlike your car, your computer is continuously under attack. So, that means you have to not just upgrading and updating windows but all of the software that's on your computer. You know, I talked a little bit earlier about Internet Explorer, and only Internet Explorer alone having it on your computer will cause other programs on your computer to get infected and allow hackers access. It's just plain old, not worth it. Well, let's talk about Anti-virus doctrine. Oh, you remember I said antivirus software? Yeah, I convinced myself that it's, it's about 10% effective at no more than that guaranteed. And we can go through all the numbers again, if you want to buy me a beer sometime we'll sit down and go through all the numbers, and how virus software does not work. Craig Peterson 28:19 Well, Let's talk about some software that doesn't work. McAfee antivirus software. In an article from ZD net, has a code execution vulnerability, a severe security flaw that can bypass the self-defense mechanisms built into McAfee antivirus, very, very big deal. Safe breach labs, their cybersecurity team. It is one of the groups that go around and test software, tries to find vulnerabilities, and then lets the manufacturer know so they can take care of it. But they're saying that this particular vulnerability can be used to bypass McAfee self-defense mechanisms and could lead to further attacks on a compromised system. Now, this vulnerability exists because of a failure by McAfee's programmers to validate whether or not these DLL's it's loading have been signed, let alone appropriately signed. Remember, I even mentioned that in the first segment today. These self-defense mechanisms are essential, and they need to be in place, even though the antivirus software is going to be at best 10% effective at least you would have 10% effectiveness right. So because they can bypass the self-defense mechanisms and leading to further attacks on a compromised system. It needs to get fixed right away. See an arbitrary unsigned DLL that gets loaded into multiple services that run is NT authority, backslash system. Craig Peterson 30:06 Now, the only good news is that attackers need to have administrative privileges to take advantage of it. However, I rarely walk into a business where everyone isn't running with, with, frankly, administrative privileges. The companies do that, and I understand why they do it. It's a bad thing to do should never do it. Right. But I know why they do it. They do it because, oh, it's just so much easier if I have to install software right or to call the IT person. And the IT person is the Assistant to the owner. And she's always busy. He's still running around doing stuff. I don't have the time, and I can't keep asking for permission to do things. So, everybody gets administrative authority. There are three main ways and which is why vulnerability gets exploited according to the Safebreach lab. Anti-virus software might not detect the binary, and it loads it without any verification against it. Impacted software includes McAfee total protection, anti-virus plus AVP from McAfee, and Internet Security up to and including the version 16.0 point 22. You must get the latest software. So, if you have McAfee update, pronto. And as I said, you should update, anyways. And don't use antivirus. I recommend getting a robust anti-malware stack of software. Craig Peterson 31:39 So what are people doing? Vendors doing? They're just renaming their stuff is anti-malware stacks. Yeah, yeah, that'll fix the problem. Your listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 32:02 You know, it's funny how you get used to the weather, whether it's hot or cold. You're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN. And online at Craig Peterson dot com. You'll find my Facebook page by going to Craig peterson.com slash Facebook. And I've started posting some stuff up there. Well, I do that actually, every day. My wife is the one that's putting the articles up that I come up with every week, every day. But you are also starting to find I'm doing Facebook Lives and YouTube lives, and just you know, I'm getting a little better at some of this stuff. And there are a lot of possible angles here. By the way, you know, I mentioned I was at this conference, and I was learning a little bit more about marketing and product development out there. Product development is what I kind of love doing, Right. We can do it quickly. We know what we're doing. We know how to do it. So we're trying to figure out how can we produce a very inexpensive product that is going to help a lot of people when it comes to security. And I think we've got the answer. I don't want to be, you know, mean and nasty about this, but we're working on it. And we should have something in a couple of weeks from now, that I think is going to change lives. I think this is going to be earth-shattering. If we do this the right way, it is going to change everything for anybody that decides that this is for them. So we'll be talking about that in a couple of weeks from now. But it's an idea from another industry that in fact, it's the tennis, tennis training business, and I think it's like the world's most perfect idea. Here when it comes to us, so we'll be talking more about that. But you can find that you can find information on the articles that I have every week, you can see all of that stuff you can find out about the free pop up classes, the pop-up-trainings that I've been doing, you can find out about some of these Facebook Lives and YouTube Live. All of these are free training. I'm just trying to get this information into your hands. You know, the Whats, the Why, and the Hows, all of that stuff. And there's only one way to get it. And that is to sign up, go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and I will make sure that we send you every week just a quick summary of the stuff that's going on. I'm going to have a special sign-ups for these pop-up-security-trainings, So no, I'm not going to send you a lot of emails unless you ask me to write by default. We got a great article from Joan over at darkreading.com. Dark reading dot com is one of those websites, one of many to which I pay quite a bit of attention. They do have some great, great content. In this article, they're talking about fraud and how it has changed. You, I'm sure, are familiar with our friend, the Nigerian prince, and all the things he did and how he tried to get his money out of the country. And all he needed was to use your US-based account, and you could keep some of that money. You remember that right then, it's just full of misspellings. It was just terrible, and there are reasons for the misspellings, there are reasons for the way they do things. No doubt about it. Well, things have changed. Now economics have changed. And they are swamped, making a whole lot of money. And they're doing it in different ways. They've done it before. You know, we've got tools now to detect and mitigate some of these attacks. And the easiest way to do that we have some software that all the email flows through, and it's looking for patterns look, make it look like it's a bot that sending out these emails. And when we put those this particular filter in place, in fact, it's and AI bought itself. That right the Battle of the AI that's coming to, but you know, the amount of spam these things dropped by 90 plus percent. It's just it's dramatic, how much it helps. Craig Peterson 36:58 Well, what has happened now is the bad guys have found that labor is getting cheaper and cheaper in some of these developing nations out there. And they're able to get people in Venezuela, for instance, where they are starving to death where they are picking through garbage because of their socialist government. And man, I saw this thing the other day, it just shocked me, they were using a sharpie to write on people's forearms a number, so they knew when they could get food. Yeah, when they could get food from the grocery store. That's how bad it is in Venezuela. So you have to wait in line. You have to obtain a number one thing. God is not a tattoo. It's a sharpie, but you have to get a number there on your forearm, and then you can get Food. And if you can't wait, and if you don't get enough food for your family, you're going to have to go through the garbage. It's just absolutely insane. Well, cybercriminals are hiring workers in Venezuela now, where the hourly wage has gone way down compared to other currencies. I am not sure if you remember, but Venezuela used to be the wealthiest nations in Central and South America by far and is now one of the poorest countries in the world thanks to their socialist government. Well, the hourly wage is so low that it now makes economic sense to pay people to manually carry out the fraud to write these fraudulent emails to research to get the stolen account data instead of using bots like they have been doing before. So, here's a quote straight from the article. "attackers are giving people a script and saying here's a quota you have to hit, criminals are always trying to figure out what is the lowest hanging fruit as merchants and companies evolve with defenses, these attackers evolved, humans just happened to have become the flavor of the month." So, these human-driven attacks are increasing quickly and exponentially. Now, the most recent fraud report that came out covering q3 2019. So. just this last month, found that attacks carried out directly by humans, both loan perpetrators who are trying to get money to support their families in third world countries, and organized criminal groups increased 33% over the previous quarter, nearly one in every five fraud attacks are manual now rather than automated. Craig Peterson 39:57 Now, of course, their goal is to look as legitimate as possible. Having humans involved does increase your chance of success. And so many people worldwide speak English because English is the international language of business. And it's causing a problem. This quarterly report that came out from our coasts looked at 1.3 billion transactions spanning account registrations, logins, and payments in the financial services, e-commerce, travel, social media, gaming, and entertainment industry's overall fraud increased 30%. In q3, and bought driven account registration fraud is up 70% as cybercriminals test stolen credentials, in advanced of what in advance of the US holiday season. Isn't that amazing? But now every third attack on financial services is manual. Attacks are coming from fraudsters now with access to stolen identity information. They're using the latest tools. Over half of the attacks that originate from Russia and China are now human-driven. It is changing everything. The data highlights that the entire attack incentive for countries across the globe is economically based. We've got some substantial economic things happening here in the US. If a nation's currency is worth only a fraction of the US dollar, then the incentive of a criminal in that country to defraud an American business is very high, because they've got that multiplier based on the value of their currency compared to the value of the US dollar. So, it's incredible what's going on. You've got to watch it. You got to be careful that There are a lot of bad guys out there that are looking to get their hands into your accounts. And we've got this shopping season right in front of us now. So what I would suggest to everybody is, check with your bank, depending on your bank, some of the banks and doesn't matter if it's visa or if it's MasterCard visa sent tends to be pushing this a lot more than MasterCard is. But whether it's Visa or MasterCard, you're going to find that they have virtual card numbers that you can use. And the idea behind these virtual card numbers is that you have a one-time card number that you can use when you are buying something online. So, instead of having your regular credit card number that you're using, that's sitting there in a merchant database, that may or may not be configured appropriately or secured. Remember, a secure server doesn't mean that their servers secure; it just means that your data going to it is protected in transit. Instead of giving them your real credit card number, and having that stored in a potentially insecure database, now all you have to do is give them that temporary credit card number. Go to your bank, and you can usually check on the website before you start buying stuff online for Black Friday. And we're going to have some Black Friday deals to or Cyber Monday, or you know, whatever it is for Christmas, for Hanukkah, for whatever you're celebrating. We have birthdays to over this holiday season. Get your bank to give you access, and this will be online access to get a different virtual credit card number every time you do a transaction online. It's cheaper for them to do that than It is for them to issue new credit cards when compromised or stolen. It keeps happening. All right, stick around. We will be back. We got one hour to go. We're going to talk about Google's project Nightingale and see if that's scary enough for you. We are concerned here about some of the defense firms, multi-factor authentication. I will run through how you can tell right what's the best way to do it. And how to detect a phishing site. We'll get to all of that. In the next hour. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online, Craig peterson.com. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 44:52 Hello, everybody, Craig Peters on here on WGAN and online at Craig peterson.com. Hopefully, you join me there and sign up for my email list. I get you in my newsletter. You can do that by just going to Craig peterson.com slash subscribe and subscribing to my newsletter. Every Saturday, we are here and talking about some of the latest in technology and security. The things that frankly you don't hear about, at least not the right answers in the general media out there. It's just amazing to me how many things they get wrong, again and again, and again. I try never to attribute to malice what can be easily attributed to incompetence. Is that a terrible thing to say about some new people in the media? You know, if you get right down to it, they have so many things that they have to know about and be semi experts on to write some of the articles, so I guess I really can't blame them for well for least Some of that. Well, let's talk about the chaos here for a couple of minutes. We are in the new normal. Now I'm not talking about with President Obama said the new normal was, which is people high, you know, unemployed, high levels of unemployment and stagnant economy and stuff. I'm talking about a recent survey that was conducted by a security company out there that showed that 86% of 250 top security officials who participated in this survey believe that cybersecurity breaches are inevitable. Now that opens up a whole can of worms because it's unavoidable, does that mean there's nothing you can do about it? I think by definition, it does. It is inevitably going to happen no matter what you do. So why do anything? Many people have done nothing. Remember, in the last segment, and if you've been listening in the previous hour, I talked a little bit about how 65% or so of computers never were upgraded. That's, that's a bad thing, right? And nowadays, when we get right down to it, and we're talking about these 250 professionals, people that know what's going on. We're talking about people who realize that the complexity of today's cybersecurity in businesses makes it so that it's almost inevitable. Now, when we think about cybersecurity, and we're thinking about companies. Obviously there is some truth to this for home users and, and that's why we did this security summer you know, I had that hundred and 50 pages of cheat sheets that we gave away to everybody. Who participated in this. And it was designed to help you understand what you had to do in different circumstances. And hopefully, you got all of those I start, you know, they were all sent out well, by the end of September, because, you know, summer doesn't end until September 21. So I little extra time as my team and I delved into that labor of love out there. But there are a lot of pieces moving parts to this puzzle, and it makes it very, very difficult. Nowadays, we're making our lives even worse because of cloud adoption. We're using cloud services. We're using hybrid environments spread across physical machines, different locations, different teams, various cloud providers, and now businesses are using something called containers. I remember when I first heard about them, I was thinking about, well oil container on Okay, so we're talking about the types of things you put on a truck and then put on a ship right or, or you can rent while you are making the improvements like I did in my kitchen. Craig Peterson 49:11 I got one of these little containers, one of these small pod containers, and loaded it up with all of our stuff while we were working on it. Yeah, that's not what the containers at the businesses are using. These dedicated containers perform a specific purpose, like running a website, or a database or something else. It's just getting very, very difficult to keep track of it all. And frankly, that's why we're seeing some of the major breakdowns. Now we do not see in these in breakdowns like Equifax. What was that? It was, Oh, yeah, a username of admin with a password of admin rights. Stuff like that is just plain old, stupid, but because of everything so complicated and were not tested thoroughly, they broke in. Now, if you are in a business-like, for instance, a shipbuilder, you are thinking about failures. Because if you're out in that open ocean and you get a rogue wave that comes in, hit you on the side, your ship is going to flip over. Now obviously, you don't want to name your ship, Concordia. Another one just ran aground this week over Norway. Of course, the big Concordia running the ground was in Italy, and what a mess. But shipbuilders realize that ultimately, ships are going to fail. There is going to be that rogue wave, or it is going to run aground or the propulsion systems going to go down. And the extremes are like submarines where you have all the compartments, and the idea is that a breach might occur in one compartment, but the other compartments will not. So we're spending billions of dollars, and we're likely preventing a lot of bad stuff. The number of high profile breaches is just increasing and causing devastating damage to us as consumers. It's going to last for decades. And why? Well, like so many other industries, people in the security business are not preparing to fail. And companies are not preparing to fail. It's like what I teach in my backup course, the three to one backup methodology, and I should do another pop-up-training on that. Frankly, you've got to have multiple copies of backups numerous generations of backups on various types of media, in numerous sites, because of Smith's commentary. Now, you might not be familiar with Smith's commentary, but Smith's commentary on Murphy's Law is that Murphy was an optimist. And of course, Murphy's Law is, if anything can go wrong, it will. So shipbuilders have engineered the systems, they have segments in the halls, they have multiple hulls, double triple hulled ships so that if it's carrying oil or something else, if there is a penetration to the hull, the ship won't dump oil or whatever, into the ocean. It's been done this way since the 15th century. And it's been done in today's modern vessels as well. Even the Titanic had some of these things in place, although it had some other problems. I don't know if you've seen some of the more recent studies, by the way, on the Titanic. It's fascinating. But it looks like what happened was, there was a fire in the Titanic's hold coal fire that they couldn't put out. And they had been smoldering and caused a weakening of the ship's hull. And that's why when it hit that iceberg it tore open. But that's another story here. So let's talk about some principles here security principles that they use in shipbuilding that we need to look at in modern IT. Shipbuilders assume that at some point, the ship will suffer leak. So how do you protect against that? How can you fix that? Well, they create holes that prevent a single leakage from sinking the whole ship. So, in the same way, you have to assume there might be a breach in your corporate environment and segment your network so that it doesn't spread. There's a lot of details we could discuss, and maybe I should do some Facebook lives on these things. Craig Peterson 53:52 Your staff who's responsible for maintaining the ship's hull is monitoring for leaks. They're watching for leaks, and they're regularly patching. They're painting they're scraping right to get rid of the rust and to make sure that there isn't a major flaw in the ship's surface, or you know, hull, they're trying to keep the ship safe. So, in the same way, our modern security teams have to be vigilant about monitoring and patching. To prevent these cracks in the perimeter, as well as the interior. We just last week had a client who had an internal breach. They were using a VPN to allow our remote office to get into their primary network. That remote office was breached and was used as a launching pad to get onto their primary network. And then once on one machine on the main network that they could breach, they now we're able to spread within the main network. We got to watch this. The ship's most sensitive equipment is in the engine room. And in the tape game you know in the case of a business you got to venture critical IT assets are considered ships that staff lookouts 24 seven to make sure there is a good watch, we need to do something similar with our data. Keeping the crew from accessing the bridge is an important safety measure. We got to make sure that our user identities get set up correctly and their employees, contractors, remote users can only get data they should be getting to. And we could go into attack after attack after attack. But the bottom line is when you're designing your security, you have to anticipate a breach. You've got to patch everything, keep it patched and up to date. And you've got to segment your networks. And if you need to be secure, the newest types of networking are called zero trust networks where nothing can talk to anything else on the network. Unless it's explicitly allowed because we can't trust it. So the very least segment out your Internet of Things devices, make sure your sales guys are on a different network than your accounting people. Right? Break it all down in the business space. When we get back, we're going to talk about us in the consumer world and Google's Project Nightingale, man, is this a scary project, but you know, heck, it's Google, but not can do anything wrong right here listening to Craig Peterson right here on WGAN. Craig Peterson 56:43 Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here after the top of the hour. And we are talking about the latest in security and technology. What's going on out there? We cover in some depth here some of the things that you need to understand. Some of these things are specific questions that I've gotten from you. So if you have a question of any sort you'd like me to answer on the air or maybe answer directly, email me. It is ME at Craig peterson.com. I am glad to do it, or you can drop it on my Facebook page. Now I have to say that I get thousands of emails a day. So sometimes it can take me a while to get around to it. So don't feel bad if I don't answer your question right away. But I am pretty good about answering most of the questions that people ask and particularly if you email them me at Craig Peterson, dot com that's so that's what I monitor kind of the most. Some of my team helps you track that too, which is a very, very good thing. Mountain View, California dateline. It is a scary story. And you know, we just had Halloween, but here's what's going on. You might not be aware of it. HIPAA is a law put in place, oh, decades ago now, I think maybe even as much 20 years ago. The most significant part of HIPAA is this whole concept of portability. Now, you may not realize it, the bill was certainly not advertised as being this way, but it is this way. Here's the problem. Before HIPAA went into place, what was going on if you had your medical records, and those medical records had to be kept private, they could not share them with anything and what HIPAA did was. It defined the rules for sharing, among other things. Before HIPAA, your medical records were considered private and kept secret. After HIPAA went into place, your medical records could now be shared anywhere almost in the medical community. And of course, with portability, the idea is, well, you've got your medical records, you want to go to Florida for the winter. So you want the doctors in Florida to be able to have access to your medical records, which is all well and good. It makes a lot of sense. However, other things going on in there still are. If I want the medical records of every patient in hospital x or health plan, why? And I say, Hey, listen, I'm going to buy the company. I'm thinking about buying the company. I'm thinking about purchasing that hospital. The hospital has the right to give me all of your records. That's the bottom line. Scary. And that's been happening. Our medical records have been shared and traded like trading cards. So, one of the largest health systems here in the United States is called Ascension Health. And you might have heard of it before, mainly if you are at all involved in the Catholic nonprofit health system. The Catholic Church has taken care of millions of patients for free, much of the time, you know, no charge to the patient. But the Catholic Church has been behind many of these medical hospitals and medical treatment that has been out there that we have used for generations, frankly, and you know, good on them. It has been wonderful. And they've kept costs under control reasonably right. By right by where I live. There's a Catholic medical center that is renowned in the region for its cardio care. And like many other hospitals that are out there, they will also provide charitable care for those people who can't afford it. So Ascension partnered is with Google Now ascension is, again, the largest health system here in the country. And it partnered with Google. And Google now has access to detailed medical records on 10s of millions of Americans according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, and It is code-named Project Nightingale, I'm sure you can figure out why they call it at night and Gail. And it has enabled at least 150 Google employees to see patient health information that includes diagnosis laboratory test results, hospital records, and other data. Now, remember before HIPAA, man, you could have sued and won if your medical data got shared without your knowledge, let alone your permission. Now, some of the negative results of those HIPAA regulations are coming to light, where the largest health system in the United States, Ascension, shared your medical data with Google. That is a very, very big, big deal. Now, this is reported by the Wall Street Journal, and it's according to internal documents and the newspapers other sources in all the data amounts to complete medical records and contains patient names and birthdates according to The Wall Street Journal. Now, this is a move by Google to try and get a strong grip on the medical business, the sprawling healthcare industry. In November, Google announced a deal to buy Fitbit that has gone through. I'm sure you've seen that. So now, it has access to all the sensitive health data that amassed from Fitbit. How much information have you been giving them? They've got all kinds of health records. They've got what have you put into those things? And we have Google, Microsoft, Apple, and many others competing to get access to all of our medical records and to be the storehouse so that when you go to Florida today, your records are there because you shared them on purpose. Neither Google nor Ascension, according to The Wall Street Journal journal, neither Google nor the country's largest health system Ascension has notified patients or doctors about the data sharing 2600 hospitals, doctors' offices, and other facilities across 21 states and the District of Columbia. So Google's ultimate goal is to develop the searchable cloud-based tool, but here's what I found particularly interesting, and that is about transforming care. In a statement from Ascension, the VP of strategy and innovations, Eduardo Conrato said, "as a healthcare environments continue to evolve rapidly, we must transform to meet better the needs and expectations of those we serve, as well as our caregivers and providers." So what are they doing? Here? Well, it turns out that apparently, they're having the hospitals enter in your data to these healthcare records, uploading them, analyzing them, and helping the doctors come up with diagnosis as well as prognosis frankly. They're hoping to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and save lives ultimately, and you know what they probably will. But the issue at hand here goes back to the HIPAA act of 1996. And should we be able to control our medical records? That's the big question. It looks like the answer to that is no and has been for 30 years. Thirty ish years not quite 25. All right. When we get back, we're going to talk about Rola robots of the killer variety. What is going on with some of these government contractors out there? Man is a scary show, isn't it today well after compensate next week, you're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN and Tune on Wednesday mornings at 738 with Ken and Matt, and I'll be online there too. Craig Peterson 1:06:38 Hey, Craig Peterson here. WGAN. Online Craig Peterson dot com. We are nearing the end of the show here. We only got two more segments together. But that's enough time to cover a couple of these articles I want to get to today. Let's start with this one first here, which is the Robots. You know, I have long been concerned about robots as have many other people. Some people much smarter than I have been very concerned about them. Take a look at what ElonMusk has been saying. That's part of the reason he wants to move us to Mars is artificial intelligence and robotics. Think back wow, even to the like the early 1990s with iRobot. And, and that Russian author, I can't remember what his name was, but it's been a concern for a very long time. Now, things changing rapidly. In an article from QZ.com, a new report is out from Pax, a nonprofit based in the Netherlands that's campaigning for peace around the world. And of course, Pax is the word for peace in many languages, and they're warning about this new potential trend that's coming out. I don't know if you've seen some of these moves. Movies where there are swarms of drones. And those drones swarm in on something. There was a recent one, and I think it was Angel has fallen with Gerald Butler. And the President is tagged by the attack by this swarm of drones. We had the same thing happened. I think it was only one or two drones in South America trying to take out a president down there. Well, our militaries are looking at some of this newer technology to conduct war. And you know, frankly, they have to because the bad guys, the other guys, whoever our ultimate future opponents are, are looking at this as well. China has spent a lot of time on it. And if you look at something like these drones, you could easily have killer drones out there. These drones have to have an ounce of high explosives in them, get close to a combatant, and explode themselves in Kill the combatant. That's all it takes. We're worried about what's being called this third revolution in warfare. The first revolution was gunpowder. You know, you could argue right bows and arrows and various things, but the gun powder was a considerable revolution in warfare. And then you had the atomic bomb, which was not too long afterward. The Chinese invented gunpowder. But now activists and military leaders are calling for international regulations kind of like what we have with the Geneva Convention where we defined how wars get fought. They want to govern all-new weapons systems that have a type of artificial intelligence in them, a type of machine learning. They don't want life or death decisions to be made on their own by these intelligent systems. And they're looking to ban them outright. Key governments, including the US and Russia, have resisted it so far, and I understand right. Craig Peterson 1:10:18 But what are you going to do? nears we can tell militaries have not yet deployed killer robots on the battlefield? At least offensively? What are you going to do with a robot that makes life or death decisions and gets it wrong or gets it right heaven forbid, either way, where you've got a robot out there that it doesn't have to think twice about pulling the trigger to kill someone because it doesn't think twice about it. It's almost like having some of our troops sitting in Virginia, flying a killer drone in the air that's over a site 5000 miles away. And just pulling the trigger and off that missile goes. That is not a life or death decision made by that missile. That is a life or death decision made by a human that has to pull that trigger. That's frankly a very, very big deal. The big difference between the two. Now this organization called PAX has identified at least 30 Global arms manufacturers that don't have policies against developing these types of automatic life or death, killer weapon systems. And apparently, they're doing it at a rate that's outpacing regulation. Now, this is normal when it comes to technology. I've talked about this so many times. Technology always leads any regulation, and it's still in front of the laws. It's still outpacing the regulatory ability of governments, but we're talking about companies that include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon. We've got some Chinese state-owned conglomerates like a Vic cask, Israeli firms IAIL bit Raphael, Roz tech of Russia, Turkey's STM. It is a very, very big deal. So what are we going to do about it? It's, it is a very, very good question and courts are trying to address it. You will see this article if you're interested in it up on my website as well at Craig Peterson, dot com. Still, activists don't believe that the military use or some degree of artificial intelligence is problematic in itself. The problem or the systems that are designed with AI to select and engage targets, right? The terminology that's used is acquired, identify, and engage targets. And they're able to do it at least three times faster than any human. Today, we use those types of systems, but a human still has to authorize it. So I'm I'm concerned about this packs is more concerned about the potential deployment of artificial intelligence and offensive systems, the systems that are used to go after people that will select and attack targets on their own without human oversight. I think that all makes sense. And the question is, are we going to get regulations are we going to have a Geneva convention that covers this type of technology out there? Who's accountable if an autonomous atomic weapon broke existing international law or some of these future laws or regulations, and we're talking about lives on the lines? We're not talking about weapons destroying weapons. So I'm very, very concerned, defense firms. According to courts, they're not building these weapons in a vacuum. The PAX guys are saying companies believe that's what militaries want in the Arsenal's and I'm not sure the wrong about that. Google and Amazon have both face public criticism about what they have been doing for the military. Although I have to say both of them have been to face about it, notably Google who is developing artificial intelligence at three facilities in China with the involvement of the Chinese government. And they're not doing it here in the US and yet at the same time, they won't do minor things that are designed to help protect us in that it states you know, Google I just don't get it. Understand this stuff. But there's a whole list here of weapons that are existing now. These little loitering munitions, kind of like land mines that sit in the area they wait, like maybe loiter in the area for hours before they attack a target, small or cheap that can be easy to produce. Craig Peterson 1:15:17 And there there's just a whole lot of them. They've got STM This is a Turkish state-owned defense company that produces an AI-equipped loading munitions got facial recognition, kind of like again Angel has fallen can automatically select an attack targets using coordinates pre-selected by an operator they're looking to use Turkey is Kamikaze drones and Syria. There's harpy a fire and forget luxury munition manufactured by Israeli aerospace industry ranges 62 miles tail off for two hours. What's next, right, what are we going to do? All right, stick around. We're going to talk about the mess of multifactor authentication. How did he tech, a phishing site when we get back? You're listening to Craig Peterson, right here on WGAN. And of course online, Craig peterson.com. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson 1:16:25 Hey, welcome back, everybody. Craig Peterson here, Happy Saturday weekend. Whenever you're listening to this, of course, we podcast this show as well. And with more than 20 million podcasts, there's bound to be an episode that you're interested in as well. You can listen to that by just going to your favorite podcast streaming site that you'd like to, and you can sign up under iTunes or Spotify. I'm on TuneIn. I'm kind of all over the place, and we've had a lot of good Great people downloading it, which makes me happy as well. You will find all of that. The easiest way is to go to Craig Peterson com slash iTunes, I should put a special page up that just gives all the podcast info, but for now, slash iTunes. And I'd really appreciate it if you would subscribe because that's what really helps drive up our numbers. And that's what helps get people to notice. And in fact, if we had a whole bunch of people sign-up at once or you know, over a week, then the algorithms would notice that, and they would get promoted a little bit more. So I would love it if you do that. But you know, that's up to you. Again, Craig peterson.com slash iTunes. Hopefully, I've earned a five-star rating from you. Or you can just with the TuneIn app, which by the way, you can listen to WGAN on the TuneIn app as well. And you can listen to me on Wednesday mornings at 738. with Matt and can on the TuneIn app so even if you're on the road anywhere in the world, you can listen to this station you can listen to me, and my podcast is also here on tune in. All right, an app, and a website. We got some how's here, you know, I talk a lot about the what and the why. And I give you some how's as we go through the show and a lot of the How is really left for trainings when I do courses and trainings. But we got two articles that I really want you guys to understand a little bit better. And one is from sigh where ones from dark reading. And we're going to start with this first one which is which is the myths of multi-factor authentication. Now without multifactor authentication also called two-factor authentication. In one employee, employees leave, they can quickly get back on if you don't change their passwords, but if you take their token, their physical token back, then life's a little safer. If people lose passwords, if you are a home user, and your password is stolen or compromised, someone can log into the websites. So let's talk about what this is. The best type of basic security is something you have, along with something that you know. So something that, you know, that would be an example of, for instance, your username and your password. So you put them together. And that's something that you know, your username and your password. And then something that you have might be, for instance, a token a digital token. I don't know if you've seen these. We use the type with a lot of our customers that aren't very, you know, technically advanced, that have had like a little six-digit number that keeps churning Gene on the token. So when they go to log in, so for instance, they will use this for a defense contractor or a doctor's office where they have to keep information safe. And when they log in, they're going to put it in their username, and they're going to put in their password. And then they're going to look at their token. And they're going to type in that number that changes every 60 seconds or so. Now you can do this type of two-factor authentication in several different ways. You can do it with your cell phone, a lot of people do it that way, where you get a text message from the website, giving you a code that you can type in. Craig Peterson 1:20:46 Now that's cutesy, Don't you love that I get my code on my phone. That is eminently hackable. One of the articles that I found this week, but I'm not going to share with you guys because it's you I don't have enough time. But it's, it's all about this guy that just lost $20 million in Bitcoin because he was using two-factor authentication, but he was using his phone, and then somebody sim-jacked them. And that's where a cybercr

Today on the show we talk about the Amazon Echo and the Google Now and how much data they are collecting and is it an invasion of privacy at our homes. We talk about Google and Yahoo reading our email. We talk about what is safer to use an iPhone or an Android phone. How much privacy are we willing to give up for convenience? How can law enforcement use that information and are they allowed? We get an update on the chicks and much more..... To Help Support The Show visit https://techgeekdeals.com/

Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because by understanding the past, we're able to be prepared for the innovations of the future! Today we're going to look at the emergence of Google's Android operating system. Before we look at Android, let's look at what led to it. Frank Canova who built a device he showed off as “Angler” at COMDEX in 1992. This would be released as the Simon Personal Communicator by BellSouth and manufactured as the IBM Simon by Mitsubishi. The Palm, Newton, Symbian, and Pocket PC, or Windows CE would come out shortly thereafter and rise in popularity over the next few years. CDMA would slowly come down in cost over the next decade. Now let's jump to 2003. At the time, you had Microsoft Windows CE, the Palm Treo was maturing and supported dual-band GSM, Handspring merged into the Palm hardware division, Symbian could be licensed but I never met a phone of theirs I liked. Like the Nokia phones looked about the same as many printer menu screens. One other device that is more relevant because of the humans behind it was the T-Mobile sidekick, which actually had a cool flippy motion to open the keyboard! Keep that Sidekick in mind for a moment. Oh and let's not forget a fantastic name. The mobile operating systems were limited. Each was proprietary. Most were menu driven and reminded us more of an iPod, released in 2001. I was a consultant at the time and remember thinking it was insane that people would pay hundreds of dollars for a phone. At the time, flip phones were all the rage. A cottage industry of applications sprung up, like Notify, that made use of app frameworks on these devices to connect my customers to their Exchange accounts so their calendars could sync wirelessly. The browsing experience wasn't great. The messaging experience wasn't great. The phones were big and clunky. And while you could write apps for the Symbian in Qt Creator or Flash Lite or Python for S60, few bothered. That's when Andy Rubin left Danger, the company the cofounded that made the Sidekick and joined up with Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White in 2003 to found a little company called Android Inc. They wanted to make better mobile devices than were currently on the market. They founded Android Inc and set out to write an operating system based on Linux that could rival anything on the market. Rubin was no noob when cofounding Danger. He had been a robotics engineer in the 80s, a manufacturing engineer at Apple for a few years and then got on his first mobility engineering gig when he bounced to General Magic to work on Magic Cap, a spinoff from Apple FROM 92 TO 95. He then helped build WebTV from 95-99. Many in business academia have noted that Android existed before Google and that's why it's as successful as it is today. But Google bought Android in 2005, years before the actual release of Android. Apple had long been rumor milling a phone, which would mean a mobile operating system as well. Android was sprinting towards a release that was somewhat Blackberry-like, focused on competing with similar devices on the market at the time, like the Blackberries that were all the rage. Obama and Hillary Clinton was all about theirs. As a consultant, I was stoked to become a Blackberry Enterprise Server reseller and used that to deploy all the things. The first iPhone was released in 2007. I think we sometimes think that along came the iPhone and Blackberries started to disappear. It took years. But the fall was fast. While the iPhone was also impactful, the Android-based devices were probably more-so. That release of the iPhone kicked Andy Rubin in the keister and he pivoted over from the Blackberry-styled keyboard to a touch screen, which changed… everything. Suddenly this weird innovation wasn't yet another frivolous expensive Apple extravagance. The logo helped grow the popularity as well, I think. Internally at Google Dan Morrill started creating what were known as Dandroids. But the bugdroid as it's known was designed by Irina Blok on the Android launch team. It was eventually licensed under Creative Commons, which resulted in lots of different variations of the logo; a sharp contrast to the control Apple puts around the usage of their own logo. The first version of the shipping Android code came along in 2008 and the first phone that really shipped with it wasn't until the HTC Dream in 2009. This device had a keyboard you could press but also had a touch screen, although we hadn't gotten a virtual keyboard yet. It shipped with an ARM11, 192MB of RAM, and 256MB of storage. But you could expand it up to 16 gigs with a microSD card. Oh, and it had a trackball. It bad 802.11b and g, Bluetooth, and shipped with Android 1.0. But it could be upgraded up to 1.6, Donut. The hacker in me just… couldn't help but mod the thing much as I couldn't help but jailbreak the iPhone back before I got too lazy not to. Of course, the Dev Phone 1 shipped soon after that didn't require you to hack it, something Apple waited until 2019 to copy. The screen was smaller than that of an iPhone. The keyboard felt kinda' junky. The app catalog was lacking. It didn't really work well in an office setting. But it was open source. It was a solid operating system and it showed promise as to the future of not-Apple in a post-Blackberry world. Note: Any time a politician uses a technology it's about 5 minutes past being dead tech. Of Blackberry, iOS, and Android, Android was last in devices sold using those platforms in 2009, although the G1 as the Dream was also known as, took 9% market share quickly. But then came Eclair. Unlike sophomore efforts from bands, there's something about a 2.0 release of software. By the end of 2010 there were more Androids than iOS devices. 2011 showed the peak year of Blackberry sales, with over 50 million being sold, but those were the lagerts spinning out of the buying tornado and buying the pivot the R&D for the fruitless next few Blackberry releases. Blackberry marketshare would zero out in just 6 short years. iPhone continued a nice climb over the past 8 years. But Android sales are now in the billions per year. Ultimately the blackberry, to quote Time a “failure to keep up with Apple and Google was a consequence of errors in its strategy and vision.” If you had to net-net that, touch vs menus was a substantial part of that. By 2017 the Android and iOS marketshare was a combined 99.6%. In 2013, now Google CEO, Sundar Pichai took on Android when Andy Rubin was embroiled in sexual harassment charges and now acts as CEO of Playground Global, an incubator for hardware startups. The open source nature of Android and it being ready to fit into a device from manufacturers like HTC led to advancements that inspired and were inspired by the iPhone leading us to the state we're in today. Let's look at the released per year and per innovation: * 1.0, API 1, 2008: Include early Google apps like Gmail, Maps, Calendar, of course a web browser, a media player, and YouTube * 1.1 came in February the next year and was code named Petit Four * 1.5 Cupcake, 2009: Gave us on an-screen keyboard and third-party widgets then apps on the Android Market, now known as the Google Play Store. Thus came the HTC Dream. Open source everything. * 1.6 Donut, 2009: Customizeable screen sizes and resolution, CDMA support. And the short-lived Dell Streak! Because of this resolution we got the joy of learning all about the tablet. Oh, and Universal Search and more emphasis on battery usage! * 2.0 Eclair, 2009: The advent of the Motorola Droid, turn by turn navigation, real time traffic, live wallpapers, speech to text. But the pinch to zoom from iOS sparked a war with Apple.We also got the ability to limit accounts. Oh, new camera modes that would have impressed even George Eastman, and Bluetooth 2.1 support. * 2.2 Froyo, four months later in 2010 came Froyo, with under-the-hood tuning, voice actions, Flash support, something Apple has never had. And here came the HTC Incredible S as well as one of the most mobile devices ever built: The Samsung Galaxy S2. This was also the first hotspot option and we got 3G and better LCDs. That whole tethering, it took a year for iPhone to copy that. * 2.3 Gingerbread: With 2010 came Gingerbread. The green from the robot came into the Gingerbread with the black and green motif moving front and center. More sensors, NFC, a new download manager, copy and paste got better, * 3.0 Honeycomb, 2011. The most important thing was when Matias Duarte showed up and reinvented the Android UI. The holographic design traded out the green and blue and gave you more screen space. This kicked off a permanet overhaul and brought a card-UI for recent apps. Enter the Galaxy S9 and the Huawei Mate 2. * 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, later in 2011 - Duarte's designs started really taking hold. For starters, let's get rid of buttons. THat's important and has been a critical change for other devices as well. We Reunited tablets and phones with a single vision. On screen buttons, brought the card-like appearance into app switching. Smarter swiping, added swiping to dismiss, which changed everything for how we handle email and texts with gestures. You can thank this design for Tinder. * 4.1 to 4.3 Jelly Bean, 2012: Added some sweet sweet fine tuning to the foundational elements from Ice Cream Sandwich. Google Now that was supposed to give us predictive intelligence, interactive notifications, expanded voice search, advanced search, sill with the card-based everything now for results. We also got multiuser support for tablets. And the Android Quick Settings pane. We also got widgets on the lock screen - but those are a privacy nightmare and didn't last for long. Automatic widget resizing, wireless display projection support, restrict profiles on multiple user accounts, making it a great parent device. Enter the Nexus 10. AND TWO FINGER DOWN SWIPES. * 4.4 KitKat, in 2013 ended the era of a dark screen, lighter screens and neutral highlights moved in. I mean, Matrix was way before that after all. OK, Google showed up. Furthering the competition with Apple and Siri. Hands-free activation. A panel on the home screen, and a stand-alone launcher. AND EMOJIS ON THE KEYBOARD. Increased NFC security. * 5. Lollipop came in 2014 bringing 64 bit, Bluetooth Low Energy, flatter interface, But more importantly, we got annual releases like iOS. * 6: Marshmallow, 2015 gave us doze mode, sticking it to iPhone by even more battery saving features. App security and prompts to grant apps access to resources like the camera and phone were . The Nexus 5x and 6P ports brought fingerprint scanners and USB-C. * 7: Nougat in 2016 gave us quick app switching, a different lock screen and home screen wallpaper, split-screen multitasking, and gender/race-centric emojis. * 8: Oreo in 2017 gave us floating video windows, which got kinda' cool once app makers started adding support in their apps for it. We also got a new file browser, which came to iOS in 2019. And more battery enhancements with prettied up battery menus. Oh, and notification dots on app icons, borrowed from Apple. * 9: Pie in 2018 brought notch support, navigations that were similar to those from the iPhone X adopting to a soon-to-be bezel-free world. And of course, the battery continues to improve. This brings us into the world of the Pixel 3. * 10, Likely some timed in 2019 While the initial release of Android shipped with the Linux 2.1 kernel, that has been updated as appropriate over the years with, 3 in Ice Cream Sandwich, and version 4 in Nougat. Every release of android tends to have an increment in the Linux kernel. Now, Android is open source. So how does Google make money? Let's start with what Google does best. Advertising. Google makes a few cents every time you click on an ad in an advertisement in messages or web pages or any other little spot they've managed to drop an ad in there. Then there's the Google Play Store. Apple makes 70% more revenue from apps than Android, despite the fact that Android apps have twice the number of installs. The old adage is if you don't pay for a product, you are the product. I don't tend to think Google goes overboard with all that, though. And Google is probably keeping Caterpillar in business just to buy big enough equipment to move their gold bars from one building to the next on campus. Any time someone's making money, lots of other people wanna taste. Like Oracle, who owns a lot of open source components used in Android. And the competition between iOS and Android makes both products better for consumers! Now look out for Android Auto, Android Things, Android TV, Chrome OS, the Google Assistant and others - given that other types of vendors can make use of Google's open source offerings to cut R&D costs and get to market faster! But more importantly, Android has contributed substantially to the rise of ubiquitious computing despite how much money you have. I like to think the long-term impact of such a democratization of Mobility and the Internet will make the world a little less idiocracy and a little more wikipedia. Thank you so very much for tuning into another episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We're lucky to have you. Have a great day!

Getting his start in e-commerce proved to be a series of false starts for today's guest, Jaryd Krause. While he knew that getting away from a career in plumbing and having the opportunity to travel the world was the ultimate goal, it took him some time to figure out how to get there. After several failed attempts, Jaryd realized he was not approaching his e-commerce career the right way and still had a lot to learn. Armed with the realization that what they say about ninety percent of all startups failing is true, he figured out that he needed to go in and buy an established business that had successfully passed the startup phase. He started to buy businesses and be so successful at it that people began asking him for advice on doing the same. Nowadays, Jaryd is running his businesses and coaching people on how to buy websites and earn passive income while following their dreams. Episode Highlights: How Jaryd got his start and some of his past failures in e-commerce. Where and how he found the first business that he bought. The advantage of looking for listings with professionals brokers. Some mistakes Jaryd has seen with buyers he's advised. How he guides buyers to align the business they are looking to buy with their personality and past experience. How Jaryd teaches his clientele to become attractive buyers. Advice he would give to someone who is coming into the e-commerce realm for the first time. Trends in e-commerce and where Jaryd sees the opportunity for growth. One last tip Jaryd would give to someone just starting out in e-commerce Transcription: Joe: Hey Mark one of the things we need to do is to plug the movie intro. Folks if you know that what that movie was shoot us a note and we will give you an audio mention. Chris our content director is big on that. It's awesome and no cheating though. We've had a few folks that admitted that they looked it up on Google. Don't do that just send us a note by listening. Mark: Yeah, I think both folks have actually guessed right. Joe: Yes. Mark: I'm looking at you, Mike Nuñez. Joe: Alright, listen. You had Jaryd Krause on the podcast talking about something that we talk about all the time but it's good to hear it from someone else. We technically as Jason will always say our client is the seller. We have a contractual obligation to the seller. But as I always say to buyers look I can't help my client unless I help you as well; the buyer, and constantly having conversations with buyers on the approach to buy a business. It's great to hear from someone else. That's what Steven does. You say he's from Australia. You had a—not Steven; Jaryd, you had a conversation with him about this and his job. His process is actually teaching entrepreneurs or people that might be from the corporate world how to buy an online business is that right? Mark: That's right. So he does coaching in this and obviously, he has a lot of background experience in this as well. He started out buying smaller sites and kind of building up. And we just talked—had a conversation about his views on buying which is I think fascinating for us to do in our role because you and I have some pretty set ideas as to the best way to go about buying online businesses. We do this from the seat that we sit in which is working on behalf of sellers and representing them. But like you said we can't do our job well unless buyers are also doing the job well and a good deal; a deal that's good for a buyer is oftentimes a good deal that's good for our client as well. Because if everybody wins, everybody's happy afterwards, everybody's making money; that's the goal, right? So Jaryd and I talked a lot about some of the things he looks at. What does he look at and what does he coach when he's teaching people how to make that first acquisition. So some of the things we talked about are like what are the struggles that people run into? How to get over this imposter syndrome that some buyers might feel when they're coming into an acquisition like I'm really not the same class of this guy that built this business. And he gives some really nice practical tips on how to overcome some of those problems and address those head-on. So I want to get right into this episode here and just listen to what Jaryd has to say and this conversation. And just by the way a huge asterisk, here I apologize. My microphone wasn't working properly on this. I thought I was recording through my regular podcast mic and was just going through my laptop mic so it's going to be awful. But here's the good news. I'm not really the person that you need to listen to. You need to listen to Jaryd. He's got the good information in this episode. Joe: Well, let's get right to it then. Mark: Alright, Jaryd thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I don't know if you've listened to many of our previous podcasts but we typically have our guests introduce themselves. I figured you know yourself quite better than I know you. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Jaryd: Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. So with about myself I'm from the Gold Coast, Australia. I love surfing and that was my goal to start making money online so I could travel around the world and surf. I got started in this a few years ago now and I started buying one business and then I bought another one and another one. And the reason I came into this is because I tried to start my own websites Mark and I just sucked. And I failed a fair few times. And I started failing forward and came across that saying 90% of startups fail. Well, it's actually the studies being done with that one. So I realized if 90% of startups fail why don't I go and buy a website that's past that 90% failure rate so I'm not just struggling and struggling and struggling. And I did that. I taught myself how to buy a website and then I got a little bit of help from different mentors along the way. And then I bought one and another one and it kept growing and eventually replaced my income to a point where people started asking me how to do it. And that's where I am [inaudible 00:05:30.1] in that position of teaching people as well just basically from my learning. Mark: So you said you tried starting some websites and they failed. Can you share any of those with us? Not to make you relive failures of the past but [inaudible 00:05:43.7] so you should know. Jaryd: Yeah. Well, the hardest one was—so I was in Egypt and I realized I didn't want to go back home broke to my job as a plumber. And I'm like I need to go here. So I thought what I really want to do is travel the world to make money online. So I typed into Google how to travel the world to make money online. I literally typed that in and what popped out was people travel blogging. And I just went yeah that's me. I'm going to go away and start travel blogging. And I did that for I think bit a bit over two years and I made a little bit of money. But what I realized eventually was just the competition was so fierce. Everybody with an iPhone was my competition pretty much. And it was a good value because I learned a lot on how to grow websites and how to build websites and all that sort of stuff. And that was—they did flop though like I'm just spending so much time on it and it wasn't really worth what I was getting back like at all. I was spending a lot of time on it. But that time grew into a lot of knowledge and then I thought alright I'm going to start; the second one was I'm going to start a drop shipping business. And I got home and I got my phone and I just spent a month calling people to become suppliers for this store. And it was called AusGlobetrotter—oh no it wasn't called that, my blog was called AusGlobetrotter and my drop shipping store was Trotter Gear. And I just wanted to put up a whole bunch of travel products like backpacks and heaps of these different types of travel products. And I got a bunch of suppliers and I built this store and I started making a few sales but it took a fair bit of— Mark: What year was this? Jaryd: 2013. And I started making a few sales and I'm like alright cool now I need to double this down and I forgot how long it takes to really build a business and get traction. Especially if I was doing it for free and not using paid advertising. And eventually, I realized that I was just coming up against some pretty fierce competition. You know all these big guys that are selling hundreds of these a week and I'm selling like one every now and then. And it was pretty deflating where I just I bit the bullet and ran around I'm just going to have to turn everything off and start again. And that's been two businesses that I started and I learned a lot. I didn't make a lot. Mark: You value was in the education of going through that. Drop shipping is something that is a tough category to compete in especially if you're doing that around 2013. There's too much and a lot of people are getting [inaudible 00:08:43.4] drop shipping. So how did you start to realize well why don't I go ahead and buy businesses and websites that are already been established? When did you buy your first site? Jaryd: So I bought my first one in 2014; at the end of 2014. And I was pretty hair locked; I rushed off into it and it was a good investment and I got all my return back and everything like that and it kept growing but I should have taken a bit more time and a bit more—build a better process on due diligence. So I don't know if that's the same for everybody when they're buying their first website. But it was certainly the case for me. I didn't really seek out coaches or help or mentors I was just running it on the fly and yeah early 2014 and that—but when I did buy it I realized like wow I'm earning so much more money from the share market when I was investing the share market. Any sort of investment I have ever made I was making more money and I realized that was the norm at that time with the returns or the multiples that were around just in that year. Mark: So how did you start looking for your first business and how has that changed? I think one of the problems that buyers have today is deal flow, right? Every business I just put on the market that is worth looking at has literally dozens if not hundreds of people looking at it at the same time. Where did you find that first one and what are you doing these days to really secure good deal flow? Jaryd: Yeah. So I found out about this marketplace Flippa. I went on there and realized that was a lot of not so great listings and much like—and I've spoken to the CEO of Flippa a couple of months ago and they're making some amazing changes; new CEO, it's really coming around which is great. But then they just hadn't had people that like though you were allowed to sign up anonymously and people were listing a lot of junky sites on there and it was—I felt it was a bit of the Wild Wild West. And I was just trying to find this diamond in the rough. And I looked for a long time. And that's where I bought my first business. And where it's changed now is I'm not so much on those marketplaces that are out now. It's because you've got to sift through so many listings to find something that's decent. And a lot of my clients they do that and they say I don't really spend too much time on there. I say have a look every now and then but where we're really finding them is the brokers like you guys where the listings; you guys have your brand name. You have a reputation. You don't want to list something that's a junky website or not so great. And that's why you have your process before you list it for sale. You don't want to sell something to somebody and it just goes down that go blow like that because people are going to complain and bad reviews; all that sort of stuff. And that's why I like to look to the brokers like you guys because they're more quality listings and there's already been a slight bit of vetting done and it makes the process so much easier when you come to do your due diligence. You guys actually help us buyers get more information rather than us to have to rely on sellers as like yeah maybe I'll sell my site here and I'll see if I can get some interest and they're just not like very prompt with their response should I say. Mark: Sure. So are you still active in buying sites? Jaryd: No. Personally I haven't bought a site in a while. I'm really—I do look at a fair few sites though especially through my clients. I help vendors in due diligence processing and stuff like that. So it's great to keep me in the game. If I wasn't doing that I'd be actively just purchasing. But yeah, I learned stuff. It's great too because I learned so much from that process too with my clients. How I can sort of take a backward step and not be fully in the game but I'm a bit out and just have a better—it's a really good approach for both clients and myself. We've both gained so much from it. Mark: Yeah. So now you've transitioned over into this [inaudible 00:12:58.8] because of just how you're doing and all that so [inaudible 00:13:01.7] learn is that—I'd like to pick your brain a little bit on what you're telling people in this coaching process and some of the problems that you're seeing. So let's start off with this, out of the coaching clients or the clients that you're coaching, these are all people that are looking to buy websites and they're going out there and looking to maybe build a portfolio of these sites and getting into the game. What are maybe some of the top mistakes that you see most commonly among people that are looking to buy? Jaryd: Yeah. The most common one is where people just start seeing dollar signs. They start to see—and a lot of my clients haven't really known that this industry even existed. And they start looking at sites much like a lot of people listening to this already know that your website is much like a property website where they can scroll through and look at listings. It's the same when people find this out. I noticed when I first come to this like oh my god I can buy this business this much and the multiples this much and I just go and this is in my end and it's only taking x amount of hours and they just go; they want to rush through it. And that's probably the biggest mistake is they sell themselves into the business. And what I've noticed is that sometimes whether you like this guy or not—what Donald Trump says sometimes the best investments are the ones we never make. And I find—and this is what I tell my clients as well is that if you can't sell yourself out of the business because the data shows it is so good. I feel that it's an investment that you need to really pursue. But instead of trying to sell yourself into the business why don't you try and sell yourself out of it and if you can't then move forward with it. In saying that cover all your steps during due diligence. And that's probably the biggest thing that I find when people come and want to buy a website. The second thing is a lot of people don't know so much about SEO and traffic and websites; how they work and stuff like that. So I have a few—a process and a few lessons teaching people what it actually is first, how it is incorporated in websites, and what it means for a website, and how important it is to gain traffic and to build your business up. And then there are obviously different techniques of marketing. And I think whether it's paid or SEO and a lot of SEO now is paid SEO. But that totally; they are two very important things. I would say a top thing as a third thing would be people being confident in speaking to the seller and knowing what questions to ask and knowing how to ask those questions in a way that it's a conversation. I noticed when I first had my first conversation with the seller is I asked a question about SEO and then I started talking about the finances for 10 minutes and then I went back to SEO. And I could tell after I came back off that call and a few months later I could tell the seller was just like these guys need to be game and I made the call really clunky because I was asking questions haphazardly. So that's a big thing is coaching people to have the confidence to speak to sellers because when they're first doing it they're like oh my god I'm speaking to like—I know that when I first did that I was like I'm speaking to a business juggernaut here that's owned business. They're a gun, I'm nobody. And just teaching people that like hey you've learned so much through this process of working for me, you actually know a lot more than you think you do. It's just a state; the state of being really. So getting them to state and really understanding like you've got this and that's a huge thing that we have to teach for sure. Mark: I want to go back to your first point here, the first mistake that you put out there, and that's the people that are seeing just the dollar signs, right? [inaudible 00:16:52.3] into the business and it's just that I've definitely seen that. Personally, I've experienced that as well [inaudible 00:16:58.1] a couple of years ago where I talked about in that position that I made that was a mistake and I did just that. I sold myself into the business and I just flew completely past all the red flags and caution signs and everything else and I thought I can take care of this [inaudible 00:17:16.0] I know what I'm doing like I can somehow get around the work which you can't. But I don't want to talk about the extremes of that because you talked about being able to sell yourself out of this. So you sell yourself out of this, you [inaudible 00:17:29.8] it doesn't make sense. In my experience, there are some personalities though out there that A. either will privately still look at the data in a way that they're selling themselves into the business. So you look at the data and you rather excuse the stuff that doesn't make sense or you rationalize ways that makes sense for you. Or you just hyper focus on the benefits. And I've seen the flipside as well. I've talked to buyers that have been looking for businesses now for three or four years and there's always something wrong with what they're looking at which I get. How do you coach your client to balance that out and to be able to really take that objective step back to say look this buyer I know that you're risk-averse and buying any web-based business is risky. There's going to be risks in there. Or on the flip side hey slow down pump the brakes a little bit we need to take an objective standpoint. Generally just how somebody can do get that on top of text maybe of what type of personality they are? Jaryd: Yeah it is definitely other than just a personality thing I think that's a huge point and probably is but it's also where you are at in your journey and whether you're just on a; at different times on my journey I'm being so gung ho and then a lot of times like just being very stand back-ish. As for tips on how to navigate that is I think people if they ask themselves like alright here's if I just do a massive pros and cons list. And they go here's what could happen that I don't want to happen. And you know here's the cons and here's the pros and then not just have yourself look at it but have somebody outside of being invested in this vehicle of investment to look at it as well. And I think that's very helpful and that works for most of my clients because I get to look at it because I'm not like invested. And I had a call with a kid yesterday and he was like yeah I want to go out and buy this business. I'm like do you think this is—and I didn't say like don't buy this business. I'm just asking questions in a way that helped him understand whether it was right for him or not because that's when we get the most profound learning; it's when we ask them questions and they come up and they ask these themselves rather than I just blurt the answers onto them. But I feel that that's a really good technique of getting somebody else to outside of it have a look at the numbers and the pros and cons and then that person asking the person who is looking on the business like are you willing to weigh up these risks, are you willing to take on these risks with the possibility of achieving X result? And I've done that with my second business with my dad and my third business with my dad. And my dad I love him so much but with parents what I find is they just want to protect you. And they love you but they just want to protect you. And dad was like saying like no this is a terrible, terrible business. And a lot of the business was—the financials were like; because I was buying in Australian dollars; I wanted to buy in Australian dollars because I was buying it from an Aussie seller. But I converted to US dollars for where the platform they're selling it on and then also from US dollars into a different currency that they were trading through. And it made the financials very, very messy. And my dad just like flat out refused. Do not buy this business. And I rushed off and I didn't rush off; sorry it took me like—I went through and I thought about this and our process for over a month. And I asked myself am I willing to take this risk to possibly achieve X? And the answer was yes because I knew the risk. I was willing to take it to achieve that. And it worked out amazingly well for me. But I think that's a great process that people can do. Mark: Yeah. That's good. I think a lot of this actually ties into my next question because you have said the third mistake that you see was that confidence speaking to a seller. Now when you were speaking to sellers you had a little bit about imposter syndrome. First of all wondering why am I even on the phone, and you're kind of all over the place with that and giving the impression of not really being up for the game. I know we talked a lot to buyers and on this podcast, you talked a lot about making a good impression to a seller, right? Sellers in today's market they have choices in who's going to buy their business usually. And sometimes the best offer doesn't win because of their buyer. So there might be another buyer who has a better offer and [inaudible 00:22:15.2] paper. But if a seller might know the buyer better then they'd go with them. So there a process that you really use to ask the right questions and stay on track in making sure that here's the financial questions and now here's your product sourcing questions or your content guidelines or whatever type of business. Do you teach a method for this for looking at approaches to buyer and seller conference calls? Jaryd: Yeah. And that's definitely a good question. Like how do you become an attractive buyer? Because you're so right; there's people that know their business and there's people that want to sell their business to somebody that can take it to the next level and not someone is going to just butcher it since they get it. And that's hardly—I think that's really important for everybody who's a buyer looking to buy a business if you can understand that and really respect that business, not just go—I mean they come in and just be a Wild Wild West cowboy and do this sort of stuff. I think that's a really good place to come from when you do go to jump on the phone is respect that that person has put a lot into that business. And if you come from a place of respect the rest will fall into place. But as in the techniques I feel on how to be attractive buyer is to ensure that you do as much research and you know as much as you can about online businesses. And you know the lingo. Like when people first thought they may not know what SEO is or SEM or CRO and all these different types of terms. If you can speak the language of the seller that's going to definitely gain you some points I feel. And if you are respectful and you make sure the conversation flows quite well and you're not too hard like you don't make the interview or your sales questions too much like an interrogation; if you can have some enjoyment and make sure it's a fun and safe conversation then I feel that you come across as a far attractive buyer. And there's also so many other techniques that you can use through—what's it called an NLP; neurolinguistic programming in matching the seller's energy and how you contact and phrase your questions with a middle that sort of stuff. But if you could just forget about that and throw that out the window if you come from a place of respect and you really understand the business and not just the business but the industry as a whole then the buyer is going to see like okay well this person's really done a lot of due diligence. They're asking really good questions. And I can see that they care about this business not just in a financial way but that they could be investing in this business to ensure it grows. And I want to be careful with invested in the business with emotions because you do need to be attached to a certain point as well. I feel that I think they vary; all those things help quite largely into being an attractive buyer. Mark: And a lot of that's very, very good advice there. I want to talk about some of the suggestions you would give to somebody who is getting into this initially. You talked a lot about knowing the language and understanding some basic concepts is SEO and you teach some of these things as well. I know for myself with Quiet Light Brokerage we get people that are coming in from the offline world; brick and mortar world who are coming in first time and many of them will just say I want to buy an online business, others might say I want to buy an e-commerce business then I have a few ideas of what they want and don't want. But a common question I get is do I need experience before buying an online business? So I'm going to throw that question at you. What do you think? Do you think somebody needs experience to buy an online business? And if so what type of experience? Jaryd: Yeah. I wouldn't say you need experience to buy one. But I would say you definitely need experience to grow one. And not just experience but education. Because everybody says like I should you have experience and you can't just—I know this when I first started looking for jobs when I was younger I was like you just you can't go away and get a job you got to have some sort of experience but you've got to start somewhere. And that somewhere is education. So if people do decide that like hey I'm going to go from brick and mortar to online businesses is like invest in your education in that. So then you can become more confident not just when you speak into the seller and become an attractive buyer but like hey I know what I'm going to do when I purchase this business. And I think it's an unnerving thing for somebody to come to the online world and go I'm going to buy a business but not know what their plan of attack is or what their strategy is once they do end up owning that business. And if you have anybody that's listening and has that feeling of like I don't know what I'm going to do I would suggest that you go away and get a bit of education. And there are so many people out there that do teach people how to start online businesses and that could be a place who will teach me where to buy websites as well. But understand and get some education on how the online business realm actually works. And then you put yourself into a better position for sure. Mark: Yeah, that was what I would say as well. I often recommend the people to just understand the language. You don't have to be an SEO expert but understand the business and what people are talking about. But then understand what you are personally good at; maybe it's negotiating contracts [inaudible 00:28:01.0] look for a business that you really could get that optimized in that area and accelerate that. What are some of the trends that you're seeing recently? You're looking at a lot of deal flow and working with a lot of buyers who are currently in the market. Are you seeing any trends emerge over the past 12 months and maybe even forward-looking as well, are there any trends that you see coming up here? Jaryd: I think hugely obviously Amazon, right? They're making some massive changes. We're seeing a lot of Amazon associate and Amazon FBA up until now. It's been big. Like a lot of Amazon FBA businesses are popping up and they had started quite a few years ago. But it can take time for it to snowball and traction on the shore. And Amazon FBA is a great way to go about it. People I think before these even existed didn't realize that there was like things like Zappos and different companies and different ways you could do order fulfillment for instead of having to do just drop shipping you could buy bulk from wherever you want in the world and send it to an auto fulfillment agency. But the way Amazon does it is they make things so much easier for you and feasible for everybody. So that's something that I feel is definitely been trending or whether it's had its trend or not, I'm not so sure. You can always speculate but you can't always be certain. And I feel now that with a lot of changes that have been happening with Facebook advertising and different types of advertising where it's getting more expensive and I've talked to a lot of people especially a boss over the world in Australia that they've been having troubles with getting results in marketing on that platform. I feel hugely that SEO and great content is going to come back into being a massive way to grow your business; the ones that you do buy. And I feel that's definitely going to start trending a lot more. That's what I feel and that's what I see. Mark: That's fascinating. I want to pick your brain a little bit on that. Why do you see that coming back and then how do you counter that people that are saying voice aided search; Google Now and obviously Amazon website and Siri are pulling away from SEO? Where are you seeing the growth there, and what leads you to believe that that's going to be a good opportunity in the future? Jaryd: Sorry, what are you saying they're pulling away from SEO? Mark: Voice aided search as opposed to just type initiated search where you get results. You know you ask Google for when [inaudible 00:30:38.5] form and you're going to get an answer right away as opposed to coming to process with content sites. Where do you see the opportunity in SEO? I guess that would be the main question. Jaryd: Yeah. Where I see the opportunity in that is in particular search as opposed to just where people hey Siri or hey whatever it is and give me an answer is that those deeper questions where you can get a profound value not just like a quick little win like you know what's the temperature today or whatever it is but for like something that's more in-depth like hey Siri how do I scale my business by using a specific type of conversion rate optimize—sorry my Siri just went off then. Mark: [inaudible 00:31:20.0]. Jaryd: Did you hear that? Mark: Just a little bit. Yes, that was pretty funny. Jaryd: Sorry guys. And so I feel that if you want to go like hey I want to learn how to do this type of conversion rate optimization on my business on my website. I feel that if you got really good content behind that as—I'm not so sure if that's a blog post but it could be podcasting or definitely some sort of way people can consume content in audio or video. I feel that that's going to come up the top a lot more. That's a way people are consuming it a lot easier I feel these days. And I feel that that's going to win in content in audio and visual. Mark: Yeah. I think watching how content has evolved in the past 20 years is fascinating. Jaryd: Yeah. Mark: But [inaudible 00:32:13.0] not as much content as we can and it's really matured to the point where if you're not offering clubby content you're just not going to compete at all. Jaryd: Yeah, that's right. Mark: Yeah. It's gotten way more difficult. Alright we're pretty much at the end of our allotted time but I do want to ask you what sort of; just as you were [inaudible 00:32:32.7] somebody for. You know a 30-second ride up and down and they said oh man that's really cool. What would you want to tell me to get me started in this route? What would you give somebody that's just starting out? Jaryd: Yeah, I would say hey go to website brokers such as you guys and see what is available out there and start learning about the different types of business models. And you can see how much the businesses cost, what their expenses are, what their income is, and then also what the multiple would be. And you can see the sort of returns; start running the figures, running the math. And then dig deeper into those business. And when you start getting prospectuses on different business models then you start to get a bit of an education based on different types of online businesses and then grow from there. And then once you start doing that and you get more experience in looking at that. And it takes time to do so then you can decide if this is a route for you or not. Mark: [inaudible 00:33:28.2] that's fantastic advice. Where can people learn more about you or reach out to you? Jaryd: Yeah. So www.BuyingOnlineBusinesses.com; businesses plural. And then you can search that in Google or any search engine or go to my Facebook or social handles which is just Jaryd Krause. So Jaryd Krause. Mark: Awesome we'll link to those in the show notes. Jaryd thank you so much for coming on. Jaryd: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.   Links and Resources: Jaryd's Website Jaryd's Podcast Facebook YouTube Channel

There is some big stuff going on this week we’re going to be talking about in today’s show so don’t miss out! Imagine a trip from the east coast across the pond in less than a hour. Problem solved. There is a really cool new engine technology that will allow us to go as fast as we want. Facebook in the News Again. Fines and Problems but he say’s he’s changed. Did you think Amazon was going to be the first to use drones to deliver stuff? Well, hey, guess what it ain’t Amazon. Another giant already got already FAA approval. Have you traveled recently? Well, there is a new scanner software/hardware that is being installed in our airports, we’ll talk about how that’s going to affect you. There is a new sign here for early dementia detection. If you can imagine, it has to do with the bad guys. This week I am introducing a new thing — Tools I use: We will start with this one. Slack Listen in to find out how we use it to increase our productivity. For all this and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment; it might contain errors. Airing date: 05/04/2019 Slack Bridging Email - Spaceplane Nearing - Was Zuckerberg Involved In Blackmail - FAA Approves First Drone Delivery - US Airports To Scan All Travelers - Phone Scams And Dementia Craig Peterson 0:00 Hello, hello. Good morning, everybody, Craig Peterson here. We're going to answer some questions for you maybe even questions you weren't aware that you had. Craig 0:15 But man, there is some big stuff going on this week we're going to be talking about. Craig 0:20 I want to start with this Spaceplane thing. I think that's really, really cool. The whole new story about the Zuck came out in the news this week. Craig 0:30 And did you think Amazon was going to be the first to use drones to deliver stuff? Well, hey, guess what it ain't Amazon. At we've got already FAA approval. And new scanner software hardware is going to be installed in our airports, we'll talk about how that's going to affect you. And a new sign here for early dementia detection. And it has to do with the bad guys. Some new creepy billboards you remember from Tom Cruise's movie, and where he's walked by a billboard and it greeted him based on an eye scan, retinal scan from a distance while there's some creepy billboards in London tracking shoppers and kind of cool what they're doing, kind of scary at the same time. And we will start with this one. And it's a tool that I use. And so we'll call this our tool segment today. And our team uses Slack. And if you're a business person, frankly, this works well, for different organizations, it could be your soccer team, etc. You can use it for free on the lower end. But I use it in business and we pay a decent amount of money every month. It's not like crazy. But it allows you to communicate, basically, it replaces email within our team. And it does a very good job of replacing email. They've been out there for about five years, you can find find them online at Slack.com, just like its name says. And they've been trying to kill email, which I don't think will ever go away because we're still sending emails. And now Slack is realized that and they've made email integration and important part of what they're working. So here's what they've done. They have integrated Slack with Office 365. They've also integrated it with email and calendaring, all directly into Slack. Now, that's really something cool. So in a few months from now, with Slack, you'll be able to mention people in a channel who are not necessarily in the channel. And it'll send them an email, or you can even send them a direct message and will route the messages to their email inboxes. I think that's going to be great replies that they make will come straight back into Slack. And the whole back and forth exchange will also transform a full Slack history if the person decides to join Slack. So very cool. I like this. And I'm thinking right now this might be a great way for us to do tech support. And when one of our customers emails tech support goes right into a Slack channel. Now it's not as good as what we're using right now we have some professional tools that track it all and age them and rate and grade and keep notes and stuff. But for the occasional person like somebody pops onto your website, and asks a question, that might actually be really good. So it's great, go check it out. If you're not using it already Slack.com Craig 3:43 Spaceplanes, we thought about these for a very long time. NASA has worked on them. Many companies have worked on. Do remember, the Concorde would travel twice the speed of sound. So what's that? Like 1200 miles an hour, remember the speed of sound, I think it's 600 and something miles an hour. So it traveled very fast, and remember it's faster, twice as fast as the speed of sound. And you could take that from New York to London and return all in the same day. It was just a phenomenal thing. And then they grounded them. That technology was old, it was 30 40 years old. They grounded them when one of the engines sucked some debris off of the runway into an engine and of course, caused the engine to fail. And you know what happened after that. It's pretty bad. Well, the idea of a space plane is taking that whole Concorde approach even further. So whereas the Concorde flew pretty high up, and it did break the sound barrier, if you get into near space, you can travel extremely fast, like some of the satellites are traveling, they orbit the Earth in the matter of minutes, what 90 minutes, I think it is for the space station up there. So you think about that. And wow, why can't we do that? Well, the main reason has to do with heat, can you believe that? Heat. Because you think about our space? What do you think of you think of cold, you think it well, it's going to leach the fluids right out of your body, the heat right out of your body because it's almost absolute zero in outer space. And, you know, that's just going to be terrible. So the biggest problem you have in space people think is, wow, how do I stop from losing all of my heat? Craig 5:32 Well, think about here on Earth, if you are, let's say it's just a regular day outside, let's say it's a nice day, it's 75 degrees outside. For those of you in Celsius, that you know, it's about 20 to 25 maybe degrees outside. And it's a nice day. Are you going to be out there with their sweater on and heavy coat? No, of course not 75 degrees, it's a nice out, the sun can be out, it can be warming you up, you might even be a little bit hot, right, if the humidity is up there. Well, if you're a little hot at 75 degrees, how about Have you jumped into a 75 degree pool? Craig 6:16 That water is going to cool you down very very quickly and you are going to get hypothermic. Then that's going to happen pretty quickly, right? You You're going to have to move you have to keep those muscles go and try and create body heat in order to not die right from from the cold. So what's the difference, then? Why is 75 degree air really nice, but 75 degree water is terribly cold and you can die from it? Well, it's the same type of trick when we're talking about space. The water, of course, is able to suck the heat out of your body and transfer the cold and right it conducts heat fairly well. Air does not conduct heat anywhere near as well as water does. So the air, you're actually kind of insulated, because it's not pulling, pushing the cold in and pulling the warm out. So you see the difference between air and water when it comes to how warm you feel and how cold you might be? Craig 7:26 Well, let's go to outer space. Craig 7:30 Is outer space less dense than water? Yeah. Less dense than air? Oh, yeah. Both right. So there is like basically nothing in outer space. So when you're in outer space, one of the biggest problems you have in space is how do I get rid of the heat I'm generating? Now I'm not saying that if your body was in space, you wouldn't, you wouldn't freeze and crack up and everything else. Okay, don't get me wrong. I'm being very simplistic about this. But in outer space, the real problem they have is getting rid of the heat. Machines inside the space station, generate heat, how do we get rid of that? Because we can't just dump it into the air. We can't use a water chiller right to dump it into the air. We can't just  put a radiator down into a lake or a body of water and have that dissipate the heat, can we because we're in outer space. There's nothing to conduct the heat away. It's a very interesting problem. And when I first heard about this years ago, I really had to think about it. Well, why did the Concorde fly at mach 2 and not faster? And you know, there's a number of reasons for that the type of jets, you know, you get into the ram jets, the scram jets and everything else. And I love this tech, it's so cool. Well, part of the reason it could not go faster is the same reason that we have trouble in space, they can't get rid of the heat, they couldn't get rid of the heat fast enough. And that caused serious problems. And when it comes to a Spaceplane, you've got serious problems there, too. How do you get rid of the heat from the engines. So if you launch in New York heading to London, you're going to go like almost straight up for number of miles, you're going to get into the very high atmosphere. And so that you have something to help you burn and combust and everything else. And then you're going to just run like crazy, until you get into the approach and in the new go back into the main atmosphere and go down. So how do you get rid of the heat while you're up there, and they haven't been able to solve it. Craig 9:47 But this week, this week, it was announced that they have solved that problem. A Spaceplane that can fly 25 times faster than the speed of sound, has passed this testing milestone. Craig 10:03 It can go from London to New York in less than one hour, and could go all the way from London to Australia in four hours. This is a project that the European Space Agency and the UK space agency BA Systems here in the US which of course is owned by Britain. Craig 10:25 It has been working on for quite a while and they came up with reaction engines pre-cooler for the plane. And this is technology lots of travel faster than before. And I hope you're sitting down because this absolutely blows my mind. The pre-cooler is critical because it's required to stop the engine from melting down. Because you can't get rid of the heat when you have that little air up there. And it's able to lower the temperature of compressed air in the engine for more than a thousand degrees Celsius to room temperature in 1/20th of a second. They can take it from 1000 degrees, down to room temperature to 70 degrees to 20ish degrees, 22 Celsius. That's absolutely amazing. This thing apparently has thousands of tubes inside it that's thinner than human hairs. They've got liquid helium that can cool the air as it rushes past. This is not so. So I looked up their timeline. Craig 11:35 They're calling this Sabre, S-A-B-R-E, the next leap forward in powered flight. And they are running behind a little little bit here, which is just too bad. But they they did hit this, this main problem. They did solve it. And they're about four years behind the ears. I can tell looking at this chart from BA systems but absolutely amazing what's happening with that. Craig 12:06 Okay, this, Zuck, let's get on to Facebook, who trusts Facebook anymore, right? But well, we're all still using it. Some people aren't using Facebook anymore. And they're not using it because why bother? Right? It's, I've got something else I like better. Heck, we're using Slack for internal communications or we're, we're doing however, right? People just aren't using it. The younger generations definitely don't use it. They've got all of their Snapchat type things. So the regular Facebook they're not using. So considering all of that, you know, this decline in Facebook users is not terribly surprising. But here's a problem that just came out. Craig 12:52 About 4000 pages have leaked Facebook company documents were obtained by NBC News. Now these things included emails, web chats, presentation, spreadsheets, meeting summaries, and they show how a Zuckerberg along with his board and management team found ways to tap Facebook's trove of user data including information about friends, relationships and photos as leverage over companies it partnered with Yes, indeed, Mark Zuckerberg is alleged to have leverage the information people working at companies that Facebook wanted to partner with. He used information to essentially blackmail them. Craig 13:40 So he was blackmailing. That's my word. That's not what NBC used. They called it leverage. I call it blackmail. He allegedly blackmailed people into making sweet deals for Facebook. He also used it to help his friends. It's just crazy. And in some cases, these documentation seems to show that Facebook would reward favored companies by giving them access to the data of its users and other cases, it would deny user data access to rival companies or apps. And I kind of wonder, thinking back to the Obama, the first Obama run where Facebook is alleged to have given Obama's campaign every piece of data it had, you know, which makes the whole thing with the Trump campaign look like a bunch of amateurs. Craig 14:31 I wonder if that was part of it. I wonder if that's going to come out of NBC would even report on it if it were true, right. Facebook gave extended Amazon access to user data because it was spending money on Facebook advertising. Okay, partnering with social network on the launch of its Fire smartphone. Yeah, wow. Just amazing. Another case Facebook discuss cutting off access to user data for messaging app that have grown to popular that was viewed as a company editor according to the documents. So all of this is rather interesting. By the way, on top of it all, Facebook is facing a record fine, could be as much as $2 billion by the Federal Trade Commission. So Facebook could be seen some hard times in the very near future.  Craig 15:30 Now, let's move on to this story about Amazon and delivery services. Craig 15:32 Amazon, you might know is putting almost a billion dollars into upgrading all of its systems to be able to do same day delivery throughout most of the United States. That my friends is a very, very big deal. And having same day delivery means they're going to take even more business away from other big box retailers. You know, Target and Walmart have both been struggling. We're trying to figure out how do we compete. And so Amazon doing same day delivery is part of its Prime service is really going to hurt them. So they're going to have to step it up. I like what Walmart's done. I don't pay much attention to Target. I'm not a Target fan at all. After their massive data breach, I just I said forget about it. I just don't need to go to a Target anymore. Plus that whole bathroom policy thing. But Walmart has done a lot with having the delivery of your goods being just you can pick it up, you can have it delivered to your house, pre-order it. You can sit in the store while they collect it. They've even got a nice little lounge area for you while you're waiting. You know, they're trying to compete on the ways they can compete and bravo to them.  Craig 16:58 Well, the next step beyond same day delivery is what? Next hour delivery, right. And we saw a couple years ago, it was 711, who tried it. Do remember that this little project that they launched, where they were delivering. The whole idea was they can deliver you your soda and chips for the big game at the very last minute. And I thought that was kind of cool. And it's not a bad idea for 711, frankly, but I guess it didn't work out too well for them because they certainly didn't roll it out further. Well, who's going to win the delivery game? Well, I can tell you here who won the first battle and this is from this week. Google's offshoot job just got the FAA is first go ahead for drone deliveries Google, not Amazon. So the FAA a week ago on Tuesday, authorized something called Wing Aviation. That's a part of Alphabet, which of course is Google Now. They authorized Wing Aviation to start delivering goods via drones later this year. They're going to start delivering commercial packages and unmanned aircraft in Blacksburg, Virginia. I don't know why they're the first ones but they're the first ones. They partnered with Mid Atlantic Aviation Partnership and Virginia Tech, as a participant in the transportation departments unmanned aircraft systems integration pilot program. Craig 18:24 Let's see, TDUA, I know it doesn't really spell anything. So maybe that's why maybe Blacksburg is where Virginia Tech is. This is really cool. This is all part of an initiative to accelerate drone integration to help the Department of FAA devise rules surrounding drones. It's a really important thing, everybody. Craig 18:46 This is the first time the FAA has granted a so called air carrier certification for drone delivery of items like food medicine, small consumer products, Wing plans to reach out to the community before getting started in order to get a sense of its needs. So this is going to be interesting, Amazon we know has been working on drone package delivery. But Amazon Prime Air for quite a while it's got development centers in the US, UK, Australia, France and Israel. George Mason University said a lot of students have some food and drinks be delivered via drone on the ground. We've seen ground drones as well, up in California at UC Berkeley, where Amazon has these little drones that drive around campus to deliver pizza and beer. I don't know about beer, but whatever it is the students can get there on campus. It's Wall Street Journal insane, it probably won't be until 2020 2021, before the FAA implements broader rules that lay out the land, the land really for delivering packages. There's a lot of issues here. But if you look at the picture, I've got it up on my website at http://CraigPeterson.com this drone. And it doesn't look like any drone you like you're likely to have seen before. This thing is called a Wing, it kind of looks like a wing. Actually, what it kind of looks like is a long stick with a bunch of blades on the side that it uses to drive around. So these things can be faster, cleaner, less expensive to transport stuff around our our cities. And did you hear that? Our Roomba just started up here. I got an automated drone, a little little device that crawls around the the studio here and cleans it up. So she's, she's off, I just hit the  switch. It's all controlled by WiFi. Craig 20:42 Okay, I reported earlier about Facebook, and this largest civil fine, it actually might be as much as $5 billion. I miss my note I had put down on that. Okay, if you're departing from a US airport, your face will be scanned, it's already being scanned in many of our airports. And this happens as you're going through security, you might not have known it. But here's what's happening right now the US Customs and Border Protection is going to expand the program and the use of facial recognition technology. And their goal is to identify just about every person leaving the United States on a commercial flight. Now remember US citizens in order to go out and go back in reasonably easily, you need a passport, right? And so they have your face, they have your picture. It's in a massive database, and they're going to start using it. They're already using this particular technology at 15 US airports already grabs a photo of you as you're approaching the airport departure gate. It's then compared to a visa passport applications to look for matches, and then create an exit records they'll know when you leave. Now I imagine they're going to keep track of when you come back as well. Craig 22:07 But if you don't have a match, you're going to get pulled aside for closer inspection by Customs and Border Patrol. Now that's kind of interesting too. Now in the fiscal year 2018 overstayed on these visas was a problem, right. But they didn't have much technology in place to try and find them. And they're saying this is in a report that came out from Customs and Border Patrol. But they're saying that they're going to be scanning 97% of departing commercial air travelers. And they're saying it's highly reliable. They've already scanned 15,000 flights. 7,000 passengers on those 15,000 flights were detected as over stays. Isn't that amazing? And they only started using the system 2017. So you can see why they look at this as an important tool to control access here and watch for visa over stays. Very interesting. Okay. Do you know somebody who's a little older? We only have a couple of minutes left here. Craig 23:16 One of the interesting signs according to see and n report here, interesting signs of dementia, an earlier sign is falling for phone scams. Craig 23:31 So what happens is a scammer call up and they have a cheery voice asking if you can use the first name. She doesn't remember entering the sweepstakes, but he assures her that she's won. What matters is that you've won all you need to do is we've got a unique investment opportunity for you, if you send 200 bucks, you'll get 2000 return. 10 times return on investment. So she transferred 200 bucks to them. And it kept escalating. And this according to Dr. Angela Sanford, this particular case, who practices geriatric medicine is St. Louis University Hospital, she was probably 10 or $12,000, into this before the niece became aware of what was happening. So this patient who was later diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, had not scored super low on memory test. she said. The problem in her brain affected not the patient's ability to remember, but her ability to judge. So keep an eye out for the seniors, you know, this is a $3 billion dollar industry theft or defraud from millions of seniors. That's according to the DOJ. And these creepy billboards that are tracking shoppers over in the UK, we already know that London is or at least was the most surveilled city in the world. They have the most surveillance cameras up and they use it to identify people. Well, it's not illegal in the UK. And I don't think it's illegal in the US either to scan shoppers and not informed them that you're scanning. So here's what's happening. They have facial recognition software that doesn't recognize you like the, you know, Customs and Border Patrol is doing. But what it does is it recognizes your sex and your mood. So it knows well, we just had a bunch of men and their young men walk into the store, and they are happy, they're excited. They're sad, they're angry, it figures out all of the sound. So the Sunday Times over there in the UK, discovered 50 of these screens that show ads based on who's walking by, their sex and their mood. Isn't that something. And the companies are claiming they comply with the law, and the legal requirement. An outdoor in the first tech companies use this kind of tech. It's kind of interesting. They call it the lookout system. And it's being used on billboards. So you can see a picture. Again, it's up on my site at http://CraigPeterson.com. But there's showing this Swarovski I guess it is ad, oh, I see they're jewelry, I thought it was a clothing ad. And a big, big billboard, one of these bright LED billboard, and a little tiny camera on top kind of reminds me of an iPad or something right? And they measure your level of happiness or sadness, and they end dwell time. And they're changing the billboard based on the audience. So expect more of that in the future. I'm sure that's coming here. If it's not here already. Craig 26:48 Well, thanks for listening today. I appreciate you guys being with us. I ran a test the last couple of weeks over on YouTube. I put my shows up there and you know, I'm showing the articles and some photos and things, doing commentary, just like this show here on the radio and the podcasts that I do. And I'd love to get your feedback. Is it worth me taking the time to do that? Because man, I'm sinking a lot of time into all of this, keeping everybody up to date. If you think it's worth your time, let me know. If you want to check it out. Just go to http://CraigPeterson.com/YouTube. Just my name http://CraigPeterson.com/YouTube and it'll take you over there. And then email me@CraigPeterson.com and let me know. Just me@CraigPeterson.com. Let me know what you think. You can always send questions or comments and keep an ear out too. I've got another course coming up another three or four courses actually. Free courses, absolutely free. No selling involved. So keep an eye out for those two. http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe to find out more. Have a good great week everybody. Take care. Bye bye. ---  Related articles: What Principles Used The Kentucky Derby Apply To Cyber Security Blackmail Afoot: Mark Zuckerberg “Leveraged” Facebook User Data To Fight Rivals And Help Friends, Leaked Documents Show ‘Spaceplane’ That Could Fly From NYC To London In 1 Hour Makes Breakthrough Departing The U.S. From An Airport? Your Face Will Be Scanned Creepy Billboards Are Tracking British Shoppers With Built-In Cameras That Target Ads Based On Your Mood Google’s Wing – Not Amazon — Has Landed The First Approval For Drone Delivery Falling For Phone Scams Could Be An Early Sign Of Dementia, Study Says Facebook Expects To Face Largest Ever Civil Fine For User Privacy And Data Breaches Slack Is Bridging Email To Chat, Improving Calendar Integration And Search --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Hai già provato a dire "Ok Google" al tuo smartphone Android?In questo modo attiverai l'assistente di Google che ti potrà aiutare a fare delle cose.Cosa?Scoprilo in questa puntata!

You don’t own your vehicle? Bitcoin and Ripple? Also, DAPS, more Star Wars, Project Fi, and much, much more… Special Guest: None Stories of the Week:--Random Access: Book of Satoshi, DAPS, 220TB cassette tape from Fujifilm and IBM, NVIDIA SHIELD console now has a $299 500gb option, DHS is opening an office in Silicon Valley, Project Fi, Facebook’s Hello, Apple is taking apps out of the App Store if they say they support Pebble, Yahoo to take on Google Now with “Index”.--“You Can’t Fix That!” Link: bit.ly/1Gai8t0 Tech Roulette:--”Ripple and the Dangers of Gateways” Link: bit.ly/1brvM2P, bit.ly/1zYQBZm Important Messages:--”App and Zenith? What is wrong with Telegram? A Telebit problem? Star Wars spin-offs and the secrets of Yoda? Passport to Freedom?” Tool of the Week:--“?” Hacksec:--”?” The Climax:--”?” APPENDIX:--”Help get LRN back on in Africa!” Link: bit.ly/1FuObG7--”Book of Satoshi” Link: adbl.co/1HAh99I --”Telebit” Link: www.telebit.org/--”Libreboot X200” Link: bit.ly/1FI57ew--”True Survivor” Link: youtu.be/ZTidn2dBYbY---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Make easy monthly donations through Patreon: www.patreon.com/sovryntechAnd you can tip me at: sovryntech.tip.me---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NXT: NXT-4V3J-VA4W-4EY3-GUWV2NAMECOIN: NHfN1kpj8G9aUCCHuummBKa8mPvppN1UFaLITECOIN: LLUXwfWrKDpuK38ZnPD14K6zc6rUaRgo9WBITCOIN: 1AEiTkWiF8x6yjQbbhoU89vHHMrkzQ7o8d---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Don’t forget you can e-mail the show at: brian@zomiaofflinegames.comAlso at Protonmail.ch at: anarchy@protonmail.chI’m also on Telegram: @SovrynMinilock.io ID: 67JpL89QkmcJHC9KMGjcNy9VrwsNYDpfCQu9gKXGijVVYBitMessage: BM-NBMFb4W42CqTaonxApmUji1KNbkSESki---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You can also visit our IRC channel on Freenode: #SovrynBalnea---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------www.sovryntech.comwww.twitter.com/sovryntechplus.google.com/+BrianSovryn1i/liberty.me/members/briansovryn/www.facebook.com/BrianSovryninstagram.com/Bsovryn/steamcommunity.com/id/ninjaprogram/

You don’t own your vehicle? Bitcoin and Ripple? Also, DAPS, more Star Wars, Project Fi, and much, much more… Special Guest: None Stories of the Week:--Random Access: Book of Satoshi, DAPS, 220TB cassette tape from Fujifilm and IBM, NVIDIA SHIELD console now has a $299 500gb option, DHS is opening an office in Silicon Valley, Project Fi, Facebook’s Hello, Apple is taking apps out of the App Store if they say they support Pebble, Yahoo to take on Google Now with “Index”.--“You Can’t Fix That!” Link: bit.ly/1Gai8t0 Tech Roulette:--”Ripple and the Dangers of Gateways” Link: bit.ly/1brvM2P, bit.ly/1zYQBZm Important Messages:--”App and Zenith? What is wrong with Telegram? A Telebit problem? Star Wars spin-offs and the secrets of Yoda? Passport to Freedom?” Tool of the Week:--“?” Hacksec:--”?” The Climax:--”?” APPENDIX:--”Help get LRN back on in Africa!” Link: bit.ly/1FuObG7--”Book of Satoshi” Link: adbl.co/1HAh99I --”Telebit” Link: www.telebit.org/--”Libreboot X200” Link: bit.ly/1FI57ew--”True Survivor” Link: youtu.be/ZTidn2dBYbY---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Make easy monthly donations through Patreon: www.patreon.com/sovryntechAnd you can tip me at: sovryntech.tip.me---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NXT: NXT-4V3J-VA4W-4EY3-GUWV2NAMECOIN: NHfN1kpj8G9aUCCHuummBKa8mPvppN1UFaLITECOIN: LLUXwfWrKDpuK38ZnPD14K6zc6rUaRgo9WBITCOIN: 1AEiTkWiF8x6yjQbbhoU89vHHMrkzQ7o8d---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Don’t forget you can e-mail the show at: brian@zomiaofflinegames.comAlso at Protonmail.ch at: anarchy@protonmail.chI’m also on Telegram: @SovrynMinilock.io ID: 67JpL89QkmcJHC9KMGjcNy9VrwsNYDpfCQu9gKXGijVVYBitMessage: BM-NBMFb4W42CqTaonxApmUji1KNbkSESki---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You can also visit our IRC channel on Freenode: #SovrynBalnea---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------www.sovryntech.comwww.twitter.com/sovryntechplus.google.com/+BrianSovryn1i/liberty.me/members/briansovryn/www.facebook.com/BrianSovryninstagram.com/Bsovryn/steamcommunity.com/id/ninjaprogram/

Google 2.0? The future of payments? Also, more about intentional communities, how the Internet is done wrong, banned books, and much, much more… Special Guest: None Stories of the Week:--Rapidfire Stories: People are sticking by their tried and true apps, Kobo Aura H20, LG’s Wine Smart KitKat flip phone, BlackBerry Passport released for enterprise, BendGate and 8gate.--”Google 2.0” Link: goo.gl/OnlTYa Tech Roulette:--”Apple, PayPal, Amazon, Walmart, and Bitcoin” Game of Choice:--”SoulCalibur” Important Email:--”What did you mean by not believing in property? Could you use crypto in games? Do you think there is device that will come after the smartphone like wearable? Do you think Google Now, Siri, or Cortana is better?” Website of the Week:--”bannedbooksweek.org” Link: bannedbooksweek.org/ Hacksec:--”The Internet: We’re Doing It Wrong” Link: goo.gl/XXFou6 Software of the Week:--”HexChat” Link: hexchat.github.io/ The Climax:--”Intentional Communities, Part II” APPENDIX:--”Rethinking Civilization” Link: goo.gl/LFPEj5--”Coins in the Kingdom” Link: launch.coinsinthekingdom.com/--”Keenevention 2014” Link: keenevention.info/----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NXT: NXT-4V3J-VA4W-4EY3-GUWV2BLACKCOIN: BP88JtwY9xLev5RKbxpZVuwyhtVdChrADNAMECOIN: NHfN1kpj8G9aUCCHuummBKa8mPvppN1UFaLITECOIN: LLUXwfWrKDpuK38ZnPD14K6zc6rUaRgo9WBITCOIN: 1AEiTkWiF8x6yjQbbhoU89vHHMrkzQ7o8d------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Don’t forget you can e-mail the show at: sovryntech@riseup.netYou can also visit our IRC channel on Freenode: #SovrynBalnea------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Brian Sovryn prefers RetroShare! Below is the certificate to find and connect with the show on RetroShare (Username: SovrynTech) 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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You can also contact the show through BitMessage at the address: BM-NBMFb4W42CqTaonxApmUji1KNbkSESki------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------www.sovryntech.comwww.twitter.com/sovryntechplus.google.com/+BrianSovryn1i/liberty.me/members/briansovryn/

Google 2.0? The future of payments? Also, more about intentional communities, how the Internet is done wrong, banned books, and much, much more… Special Guest: None Stories of the Week:--Rapidfire Stories: People are sticking by their tried and true apps, Kobo Aura H20, LG’s Wine Smart KitKat flip phone, BlackBerry Passport released for enterprise, BendGate and 8gate.--”Google 2.0” Link: goo.gl/OnlTYa Tech Roulette:--”Apple, PayPal, Amazon, Walmart, and Bitcoin” Game of Choice:--”SoulCalibur” Important Email:--”What did you mean by not believing in property? Could you use crypto in games? Do you think there is device that will come after the smartphone like wearable? Do you think Google Now, Siri, or Cortana is better?” Website of the Week:--”bannedbooksweek.org” Link: bannedbooksweek.org/ Hacksec:--”The Internet: We’re Doing It Wrong” Link: goo.gl/XXFou6 Software of the Week:--”HexChat” Link: hexchat.github.io/ The Climax:--”Intentional Communities, Part II” APPENDIX:--”Rethinking Civilization” Link: goo.gl/LFPEj5--”Coins in the Kingdom” Link: launch.coinsinthekingdom.com/--”Keenevention 2014” Link: keenevention.info/----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NXT: NXT-4V3J-VA4W-4EY3-GUWV2BLACKCOIN: BP88JtwY9xLev5RKbxpZVuwyhtVdChrADNAMECOIN: NHfN1kpj8G9aUCCHuummBKa8mPvppN1UFaLITECOIN: LLUXwfWrKDpuK38ZnPD14K6zc6rUaRgo9WBITCOIN: 1AEiTkWiF8x6yjQbbhoU89vHHMrkzQ7o8d------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Don’t forget you can e-mail the show at: sovryntech@riseup.netYou can also visit our IRC channel on Freenode: #SovrynBalnea------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Brian Sovryn prefers RetroShare! Below is the certificate to find and connect with the show on RetroShare (Username: SovrynTech) 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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You can also contact the show through BitMessage at the address: BM-NBMFb4W42CqTaonxApmUji1KNbkSESki------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------www.sovryntech.comwww.twitter.com/sovryntechplus.google.com/+BrianSovryn1i/liberty.me/members/briansovryn/

Sometime late last year I realized that I wanted my ordinary bathroom mirror to be more like the future we were promised in the movies. There doesn’t seem to be anyone selling the product I was looking for. The individual parts, however, were fairly easy to get. A number of people have done similar custom builds recently, but I had something different in mind. So I ordered myself a two-way mirror, a display panel and controller board, plus a bunch of components and arts & crafts supplies. In reality there was quite a bit of experimentation and some dead ends before I got to this set of parts, but let’s have a look at the finished — yet by no means final—result: Welcome to my bathroom. Please excuse the carefully arranged mess around the medicine cabinet and its pristine mirror surface. To the right of where my face would be we have the time and date. To the left is the current weather and a 24-hour forecast. Below are some recent news headlines. Here’s a close-up of that area: Unless the weather is cloudy, there will be a little color in the UI, but for the most part the text and icons are monochrome to prevent them from being too distracting. The code behind this UI uses some simple Android APIs (e.g. this one is neat) plus Forecast for the weather and the Associated Press for news. Other concepts I’m playing with are traffic, reminders, and essentially anything that has a Google Now card. The idea is that you don’t need to interact with this UI. Instead, it updates automatically and there’s an open-ended voice search interface for anything else. The display is only a couple of millimeters thin and embedded in a layer between the two-way mirror glass and the door of the medicine cabinet. That way it looks very clean and I can keep using all the shelf space inside. Here’s the open door at an angle and viewed edge-on: This prototype is still a work in progress and I haven’t spent much time on the software yet. The UI above is only a few hundred lines of code and I’m experimenting with different devices to run it—initially Chromecast, then Nexus Player, and most recently Fire TV Stick. That means until I settle on a platform and clean up the electronics it does look a little bit messy when you peek inside: And that’s where I am with this project so far. Looking forward to realizing some of the remaining ideas. Maybe I’ll post a more detailed making-of with the pictures I took during the build.

Bautismo podcastil de Igor, compañero Teknolari al que liamos para que nos cuente su experiencia con asistentes como Alexa y Google Now además de seguir con el Serial de COMO COMPRAR UN IPHONE SIN MORIR EN EL INTENTO de Deivid, el simio Maquero. Esperamos que os guste la brevedad de éste desvario. Éste podcast forma parte del Universo de SOSPECHOSOS HABITUALES, la mejor red de podcast del mundo.

Bautismo podcastil de Igor, compañero Teknolari al que liamos para que nos cuente su experiencia con asistentes como Alexa y Google Now además de seguir con el Serial de COMO COMPRAR UN IPHONE SIN MORIR EN EL INTENTO de Deivid, el simio Maquero. Esperamos que os guste la brevedad de éste desvario. Éste podcast forma parte del Universo de SOSPECHOSOS HABITUALES, la mejor red de podcast del mundo.

  Your App Lady  Show Notes Series 1 Episode 8 Welcome to series 1 episode 8 of the Your App Lady Podcast! I am Betsy Furler and I am Your App Lady. I am a wife, mother to two boys, a Product Designer, business owner and speech pathologist. I’m also an app addict. Join me as I talk about my favorite subject: Apps.  And I may also occasionally talk about my kids, my work and the rest of my life. On each episode, I’ll talk about recent tech news, recommend apps that I use myself and leave you with a great tech tip. Tech News  AFLAC’s toy robot for kids facing cancer is the smartest toy of all! For more information: https://www.theverge.com/ces/2018/1/11/16874724/aflac-special-duck-robot-toy-children-cancer-therapy-ces-2018 I love this duck robot that is made specifically for kids who are battling cancer. AFLAC designed the duck to help kids cope. The duck has emoji patches that change the duck’s expression and the child can give the duck an IV. The duck will also quack and cuddle with the child. One of the emoji patches is a rocket ship. It will take the child to their “happy place” making the environmental sounds from that environment such as a rainforest, garden or amusement park. App of the Week: Scanner Pro by Readdle  Available for iPhone and iPad. Also: Tiny Scanner by Appxy A scanner app on your phone is one of the most convenient apps you can have. I use Scanner Pro but know many people who are happy with Tiny Scanner - Tiny Scanner is available for Android and iPhones/iPads. I use Scanner Pro frequently to get paperwork into a digital form and on to my phone. I use this for business papers, handouts at conferences, medical records, baseball schedules, class lists etc. These papers are then stored on my phone and I can find them easily. I always scan my son’s school schedule with his locker number and combination at the beginning of each year. Then I have the schedule if I need to get him out of class or need to put something in his locker. It is also convenient when you need to sign and return a form. School permission forms can be scanned and then signed in an app like PDFExpert and emailed right back to the teacher. If you want a copy of a friend’s recipe or photo, it’s easy to scan it. A scan is much clearer than a photo and the corners can be squared so if you then print it, it will look like a copy and not like a photo. Tech Tip Identify Songs In An Instant. You no longer need an app like Shazam to identify songs. Siri, Google Now or Cortana can identify songs for you. Just activate your virtual assistant and ask her to name the song. For example, I said “Siri, what song is playing?” And she answered correctly. It was “Come Alive” from The Greatest Showman. I’m still obsessed! For more information: https://www.t3.com/news/23-smartphone-tricks-to-impress-your-friends Thanks for listening to Your App Lady today!  Share the podcast with your friends, they’ll thank you for it! Get our newsletter and stay up to date by clicking here. Follow me Twitter: @yourapplady Instagram: @yourapplady Facebook: @yourapplady LinkedIn: @BetsyFurler Website: www.yourapplady.com Voice over work by John Swasey - VO Producer -281-794-6551 johnswasey@sbcglobal.net

On this episode of the Droid Life Show, we return from a holiday break to share initial thoughts on the OnePlus 5T after spending the past week with it, as well as our final thoughts on the Razer Phone. We'll also recap the latest on the Galaxy S9, Google possibly sliding Nest into its hardware division, and what the future for Essential holds with Andy Rubin stepping away. Later in the show, we'll talk Google Now, Samsung's fast charging balls, Oreo updates everywhere, and more!

La buzzword della settimana è #suono. La vibrazione declinata in tutte le sue scale: dalle musiche d'autunno alla voce dei podcast, per arrivare al buzz della app che classifica il ronzio delle zanzare.La contaminazione arriva dai supermercati mentre protagonisti della rubrica Geniale! sono vocal search e assistenti digitali.

Techscope est une émission quotidienne qui parle de technologie. C'est une revue de presse des meilleurs articles que nous retenons pour nos Flipboards. Enregistré en Live à 08h00 (heure de Paris) tous les matins de la semaine sur Periscope et disponible en Replay sur sa propre chaîne YouTube (indépendante de notre chaine principale, nowtechTV). ●♦● ABONNEZ-VOUS à nowtechTV ! : http://bit.ly/19lUGZZ ●♦● Tests video d'applications mobiles et tech ●♦● SOUTENEZ LA CHAINE : https://www.tipeee.com/nowtechtv ●♦● ↓ PLUS D'INFOS ↓ ------------ Nos Flipboards --------------------------------------------------------- ►nowtech.tv : https://flipboard.com/@jkeinborg/nowtechtv-ogcbmgbby ►SHOOT : https://flipboard.com/@jkeinborg/nowtechtv-shoot-p3e5vba1y ------------ Suivez NowTech.tv ---------------------------------------------------- ► Twitter : https://twitter.com/NowTechTV ► Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Nowtechtv ►►► EN LIVE tout les matins ! #techscope : https://periscope.tv/@nowtechTV Nowtech.tv, chaîne indépendante de tests d'applications mobile et de Tech, est présentée par des passionnés qui partagent leurs avis, astuces et conseils. L'idée derrière nowtech.tv c'est de vous offrir des tests soignés et divertissants, pas forcément liés à l'actualité et aux nouveautés, mais avec un vrai ton « homemade ». Nous pensons fondamentalement qu'il est important, en tant que consommateurs, qu'un maximum de personnes s'expriment sur les produits et nous avons voulu apporter notre pierre à l'édifice.

La segunda parte del podcast 82. No te pierdas el 82, la Pelea en la Quiniela, donde Leo y Seba se la agarran con Tim Cook y, mientras tiran uppercuts y cortitos de derecha, te cuentan trucos, apps y respuestas a todos tus problemas como maquero e iphonero. Aquí el temario: La manzana pregunta: Cuántos empleados tiene Apple en total? Respuesta: Tim Cook tiene alrededor de 92600 empleados trabajando para el. Este número ha crecido rápidamente duplicándose en los últimos cuatro años teniendo en cuenta que sólo contaba con 14000 cuando fue lanzando el iphone. Esto parece mucho pero su competidor más acérrimo Samsung cuenta con 275133 empleados más que Apple, Google y Microsoft juntas. Tema libre: Los números de Apple ponen nerviosos a los inversores! Q2 de 2016 Segundo cuatrimestre del año fiscal 2016 Cook lo calificó como un reto para la compañía. En unidades fueron los iPhones los que más bajaron las ventas de 61,2 millones en 2015 a 51,2 millones este año. El iPad no consigue salir de las tendencias de caída bajando de 12,6 millones vendidos en 2015 a 10,3 en 2016. Las Macs, 4,03 millones la más baja desde el Q3 de 2013 y medio millón debajo del año pasado. Los ingresos se redujeron de 58 mil millones de dólares en q2 de 2015 a 50,6 mil millones en 2016. -12,8 % Beneficios netos 13,6 mil millones a 10,5 mil millones un -22,8%. Errores que cuestan caro: – poco avance en el soft Pantallas que no evolucionaron Las cámaras de la competencia crecieron Siri se quedó Limitaciones absurdas de ios: multitarea Nuevo hardware a mitad de camino: iPad pro y Apple Watch Poco cuidado de los detalles: actualizaciones fallidas, Apple Car deficiente, connect Espiando al enemigo: Google I/O Google ahora interactúa con Google Assistant la evolución de Now. Los bots llegan a Google Now y podemos hablar con el buscador en una manera natural. Google Home Asistente en el hogar Un producto que tendrá Assitent y me recuerda al Amazon Echo y su Alexa. Solamente funcional en EEUU siendo por el momento experimental. Podremos decirle que active la música que cambie el vídeo del chromecast o modifique el termostato. Google Allo y Duo más apps de mensajería Allo mensajería que incluye Assistant la cual interactúa y entiende cosas que estemos conversando con la persona en cuestión. Si nos pregunta algo nos sugiere cosas Duo una app de vídeo llamada Dos apps nuevas que reemplazan a Hangouts? Android N preview 3 Dale un NOBRE al nuevo aindroid Android wear 2.0 Dispositivos más independientes apps que funcionan aunque no estén conectados al teléfono. Teclados y gestos para escribir desde el reloj. Daydream La VR de Google. Plataforma para que los fabricantes puedan hacer que sus móviles sean compatibles con la realidad virtual. Los móviles con android N activan el modo VR podrán ver menús y apps en forma distinta. Android Instant Apps Prueba una app aunque no la tengas instalada Trucos: Hacer funcionar Siri en el Apple TV. Cómo hacer que aparezcan los últimos archivos modificados en el dock de la Mac http://www.mastermagazine.info/articulo/anadir-seccion.php Programas Overcast en la barra menú Mac https://github.com/insidegui/PodcastMenu?ref=producthunt Consultorio Hola buenas chicos como andan, tengo un problema que ya me esta sacando de quisio, mas o menos saco porque uso el mouse pero no siempre lo cargo encima, hace aproximadamente un mes empece a notar este problema, el tema es que al hacer clic en el trackpad de mi Mac, clic físico, es presionando el trackpad, podía usar todas las demás funciones multitouch, pero a la hora de arrastrar o seleccionar no funciona, a alguien le paso lo mismo, como lo podría arreglar, es una mbp c2d mediados del 2009, y tengo el osx 10.11.3. Gracias jorge Rodríguez Cuando un Mac te está dando problemillas inexplicables, el primer paso es resetear la PRAM (Parameter RAM). Ésta contiene información de arranque, caché de d...

No te pierdas el 82, la Pelea en la Quiniela, donde Leo y Seba se la agarran con Tim Cook y, mientras tiran uppercuts y cortitos de derecha, te cuentan trucos, apps y respuestas a todos tus problemas como maquero e iphonero. Aquí el temario: La manzana pregunta: Cuántos empleados tiene Apple en total? Respuesta: Tim Cook tiene alrededor de 92600 empleados trabajando para el. Este número ha crecido rápidamente duplicándose en los últimos cuatro años teniendo en cuenta que sólo contaba con 14000 cuando fue lanzando el iphone. Esto parece mucho pero su competidor más acérrimo Samsung cuenta con 275133 empleados más que Apple, Google y Microsoft juntas. Tema libre: Los números de Apple ponen nerviosos a los inversores! Q2 de 2016 Segundo cuatrimestre del año fiscal 2016 Cook lo calificó como un reto para la compañía. En unidades fueron los iPhones los que más bajaron las ventas de 61,2 millones en 2015 a 51,2 millones este año. El iPad no consigue salir de las tendencias de caída bajando de 12,6 millones vendidos en 2015 a 10,3 en 2016. Las Macs, 4,03 millones la más baja desde el Q3 de 2013 y medio millón debajo del año pasado. Los ingresos se redujeron de 58 mil millones de dólares en q2 de 2015 a 50,6 mil millones en 2016. -12,8 % Beneficios netos 13,6 mil millones a 10,5 mil millones un -22,8%. Errores que cuestan caro: – poco avance en el soft Pantallas que no evolucionaron Las cámaras de la competencia crecieron Siri se quedó Limitaciones absurdas de ios: multitarea Nuevo hardware a mitad de camino: iPad pro y Apple Watch Poco cuidado de los detalles: actualizaciones fallidas, Apple Car deficiente, connect Espiando al enemigo: Google I/O Google ahora interactúa con Google Assistant la evolución de Now. Los bots llegan a Google Now y podemos hablar con el buscador en una manera natural. Google Home Asistente en el hogar Un producto que tendrá Assitent y me recuerda al Amazon Echo y su Alexa. Solamente funcional en EEUU siendo por el momento experimental. Podremos decirle que active la música que cambie el vídeo del chromecast o modifique el termostato. Google Allo y Duo más apps de mensajería Allo mensajería que incluye Assistant la cual interactúa y entiende cosas que estemos conversando con la persona en cuestión. Si nos pregunta algo nos sugiere cosas Duo una app de vídeo llamada Dos apps nuevas que reemplazan a Hangouts? Android N preview 3 Dale un NOBRE al nuevo aindroid Android wear 2.0 Dispositivos más independientes apps que funcionan aunque no estén conectados al teléfono. Teclados y gestos para escribir desde el reloj. Daydream La VR de Google. Plataforma para que los fabricantes puedan hacer que sus móviles sean compatibles con la realidad virtual. Los móviles con android N activan el modo VR podrán ver menús y apps en forma distinta. Android Instant Apps Prueba una app aunque no la tengas instalada Trucos: Hacer funcionar Siri en el Apple TV. Cómo hacer que aparezcan los últimos archivos modificados en el dock de la Mac http://www.mastermagazine.info/articulo/anadir-seccion.php Programas Overcast en la barra menú Mac https://github.com/insidegui/PodcastMenu?ref=producthunt Consultorio Hola buenas chicos como andan, tengo un problema que ya me esta sacando de quisio, mas o menos saco porque uso el mouse pero no siempre lo cargo encima, hace aproximadamente un mes empece a notar este problema, el tema es que al hacer clic en el trackpad de mi Mac, clic físico, es presionando el trackpad, podía usar todas las demás funciones multitouch, pero a la hora de arrastrar o seleccionar no funciona, a alguien le paso lo mismo, como lo podría arreglar, es una mbp c2d mediados del 2009, y tengo el osx 10.11.3. Gracias jorge Rodríguez Cuando un Mac te está dando problemillas inexplicables, el primer paso es resetear la PRAM (Parameter RAM). Ésta contiene información de arranque, caché de discos, caché de RAM, etc, etc. Es dec...

  Mimo, że podzieliliśmy nasz odcinek na rozdziały, to śmiało można uznać, że jest to rozmowa otwarta. Najpierw pytaliśmy Google Now: „Gdzie jest Bartek?”, potem zajęliśmy się KanbanFlow i Trello, a na koniec e-zakupy – „Sławek, kup jajka!”. Jednak to tylko mała część dzisiejszego odcinka, bo dziś, mówimy o: 04:14 Google Now mówi po polsku; […]

The tables are turned, as I become the topic of conversation, leaving my guest Jesse Wilson to drive and pose the questions during in-depth discussion about the recently released Action Launcher 3.5 update. We of course dig into the nitty-gritty of this update, where I discuss my motivations for developing Action Launcher 3's new Quickbar feature, how much of a struggle this update was for me to develop and why, how the launch has been received and more. Jesse also asks me what motivated me to start writing Action Launcher in the first place, we discuss details on features from Action Launcher 2 that haven't made it to Action Launcher 3, and I offer my perspective on Google Now as a launcher feature, and discuss whether I feel such support will ever come to Action Launcher.   Follow Jesse on Twitter: @jessewilson   Links Action Launcher 3 on Google Play  

Q1 earnings hit the street, Best Buy to start accepting Apple Pay, and Google Now functionality expands to dozens of third party apps. How to Contact us:650-999-0524 How to Listen:

Imagine a world where everyone could have a personal assistant to schedule meetings for them. Checking in with your team? Ask for it by next Friday and it shows up on your calendar a few minutes later. Drinks with friends? Handled. This is no longer the luxury of executives. Human assistants, even outsourced to foreign countries, are still pretty costly. But a robot, one that lives inside your email and calendar, that's cheap and could catch on. If it works. "I think it is inevitable that we will reach that point in time where we simply cannot allow you to do a task as simple as this," Dennis Mortensen, CEO of X.AI In this episode, we test out a new breed of personal assistant. Her, or its, name is Amy Ingram. She's plucky, tenacious, and loves arranging meetings. In contrast to Apple's Siri, Google Now or Microsoft's Cortana, Amy is specialized on one thing and one thing only: scheduling. A new and increasingly common type of software, Amy isn't a program you download, or an app you install. "I'm just really grateful that I can have that time back to be productive.... I've been in heaven honestly," Jonathan Lehr, Co-Founder of Workbench and user of Amy the robot assistant. You simply email her a request like you would a human—she has her own email address—and Amy comes to understand your natural language. Then she takes over the email ping pong with your friends and colleagues and hashes out the details until a meeting is set. Sound like salvation? In theory. We put her to the test. And also had a little fun using Amy as a daft Turing test on our friends to see if they would know the difference between a robot and a person. Along the way we found out a few dirty secrets about human nature that pop up when you are trying to program a robot helper. Like when our producer Alex tried to break Amy's will. "For some reason when you know it is a machine the impulse is: I am going to make her cry," Dennis Mortensen. Next week on the podcast, we'll cover the human cost of automation from job loss to craving that human touch. Subscribe on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. And follow us on Twitter @NewTechCity. * A note: Since the taping of this podcast, Amy and X.AI can now interface with more than just Google Calendar. 

The tide is beginning to turn on Bergdahl; A new book asks "Do fathers matter"; Jack's Siri vs Vince's Google Now

This week on the podcast we're talking about Winamp shutting down, laptop reliability, and training Google Now for better suggestions. We're also answering your questions about Factory resets on Android, video game controllers on iOS, and whether you should build a NAS. Looking for the show notes? You can find this episode at http://lifehacker.com/1469261262 (after 5:00 PM PT) and all episodes at http://lifehacker.com/theshow (anytime). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A new leader for the FCC, T-Mobile closes its merger with MetroPCS and Google Now comes to iOS. How to Contact us: How to Listen:

Crisis of Design, profile switching, Calendar events in Google Now, Galaxy Note 2, and more. Hosts: Jason Howell, Eileen Rivera, and Ron Richards Guest: Jessica Dolcourt Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. We invite you to read, add to, and amend our show notes at wiki.twit.tv. Thanks to CacheFly for the bandwidth for this show. Sponsor: Squarespace, offer code: aboutandroid8