business
Dark Patterns Are Evil – And They’re Everywhere
I hate to interrupt the steady flow of happiness and joy in the news, but I want to call your attention to a small way that our civilization is degrading into a dystopian hell. Once I describe it, you’ll notice it everywhere.
The web is filled with dark patterns – deliberately confusing and deceptive choices, designed to trick us into signing up for junk newsletters, subscribing to unwanted services, spamming everyone in our address book, or giving up our privacy. […] continued
Read moreGoogle, Antitrust, And Zero-Click Searches
When you search for the phone number for Bruceb Consulting, Google shows the phone number.
Does that seem obvious? It’s a relatively recent change. Google only began serious efforts to provide One True Answer to search queries a few years ago. It completely changes Google’s role in the relationship between users and advertisers. […] continued
Read moreBest Practices To Secure Office 365 Global Admin Accounts
Business Office 365 accounts have at least one global administrator with godlike power over everyone’s business accounts and mailboxes. In our dangerous world, businesses have to protect that account fiercely. I could make a good argument that online security is more critical in 2019 than locking the door to secure the physical stuff in the office. […] continued
Read moreLastPass Learns The Wrong Lessons About Price Increases From LogMeIn
LastPass has learned some of the wrong lessons from its corporate parent LogMeIn, with price increases for LastPass Premium that land unexpectedly like tiny bombs on the credit card statement.
TL;DRNo action needed. Most people use the free version of LastPass (still free!), and the Premium version is priced reasonably compared to the competitors. […] continued
Read moreHuawei And The Dog That’s Not Barking
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
— “Silver Blaze,” The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The United States is spearheading a multinational effort to destroy Huawei Technologies. […] continued
Read moreAmazon And The Infinite Mall
Amazon has become an infinitely large mall full of small shops. More than half of the stuff sold on Amazon worldwide in 2017 came from third-party sellers. More than 2,500,000 small and medium-sized businesses sell through Amazon Marketplace.
Amazon was founded in 1994 as a large and well-stocked bookstore, something like Barnes & Noble but with a much larger book selection on the virtual shelves. […] continued
Read morePrivacy And Trust Part 5: What Can We Do?
A series of articles about privacy and trust in the era of tech overlords.
• Part 1: Data about you is being gathered by the big tech companies (as well as many other companies) in startling ways. Their ability to analyze that data and predict your behavior is more like magic than technology – and it has the potential to change the world, for better or worse. […] continued
Read morePrivacy And Trust Part 3: What Do They Know And How Do They Know It?
A series of articles about privacy and trust in the era of tech overlords.
• Part 1: Data about you is being gathered by the big tech companies (as well as many other companies) in startling ways. Their ability to analyze that data and predict your behavior is more like magic than technology – and it has the potential to change the world, for better or worse. […] continued
Read moreMicrosoft Thinks The Future Belongs To Teams (And It Might Work For You, Too)
Microsoft Teams is an Office 365 service that businesses can use for their employees to chat and collaborate, providing an alternative (and perhaps a replacement) for email inside the company. Although it’s relatively new, Teams has quickly become a strategic priority for Microsoft.
Many Office 365 services only make sense for large enterprises, but Teams might be the exception that even small businesses should closely examine. […] continued
Read moreBloomberg And Chinese Spies: The Strangest Technology Story Of The Year
The Chinese government has put secret spy chips on US government servers. They’re stealing secrets from Apple and Amazon. And the US government is engaged in a massive effort to prevent us from learning anything about it, for unknown reasons.
Maybe.
How about this: the US government is mounting a full-court disinformation campaign, spreading lies through multiple sources to discredit China and gain an advantage in trade wars – and taking down a huge media entity as collateral damage. […] continued
Read moreThe 2018 Bruceb News Year In Review
Remember when I wrote an article a year ago predicting that always-connected computers would be heavily promoted in 2018?
Yeah, about that: not even close. Nada. All the buzz died away when the first PCs in that category turned out to be underpowered and, well, pretty awful.
Okay, that prediction didn’t pan out. […] continued
Read morePrepare Yourself (And Your Budget) For Subscription Fatigue
You’re going to be so fed up with subscriptions by the end of next year that you will want to scream.
Want to play a game? Before you read further, think about your recurring monthly expenses for digital services, devices, and subscription boxes. Write down a quick estimate of how much you spend each month. […] continued
Read moreThe Password Lecture
We have to talk about passwords.
We’re going to start exactly where you expect: with a lecture about your sloppy habits, as if you’re a kid who’s about to be sent to the corner. I can’t avoid giving this lecture. It’s my job as a parent. You know you need it. […] continued
Read moreThe Microsoft Ecosystem: Evolution And Extinction
Microsoft does not have an ecosystem for consumers or small businesses in 2018. There is very little synergy between Microsoft products and almost nothing locks us into Microsoft products when we move from one category to another.
It makes old-timers sad to think of the past, because Microsoft had a successful ecosystem for decades. […] continued
Read moreThe Amazon Ecosystem: The Company That Wants To Sell Everything To Everyone
Amazon seeks to be the middleman in every financial transaction on the planet. Its incentives are all tied to making customers happy in every context where Amazon can take a small fee as money moves from one place to another.
Since the beginning, Amazon’s mission statement has been: “Our vision is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” In the most recent SEC filings, however, that is shortened; now it refers only to “Earth’s most customer-centric company,” without restricting it to sales from the Amazon website. […] continued
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