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How smart speakers and voice assistants are changing the game

It’s been six months now since I equipped my home with three Google Home Mini devices (one on each floor). As an audiophile, my reason for getting them was definitely not for use as speakers to play music (I have proper speakers for that), but rather as a test to see how far artificial intelligence (AI) driven voice-assistants have progressed. I also wanted to observe how this can affect day-to-day behaviours in a full household of five people (I have three kids under the age of five ).  While I am fully aware of the privacy issues these devices pose, I have already addressed my thoughts on the matter in this related post. Continue reading “How smart speakers and voice assistants are changing the game”

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Time to stop pointing fingers at Facebook and take some responsibility ourselves.

As a consultant involved in the digital space for quite some time now, I have carefully observed the evolution of Facebook since its first year of operation. Since that time Mark Zuckerberg has taken the heat on numerous occasions for a variety of privacy-related issues. Remember Facebook Beacon and Facebook Lexicon? What usually follows is a hopeless attempt by some people to start a “delete Facebook” movement instead of taking some time to do a little introspection. 

The news surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica over the past few months has caused quite an uproar. So much so that Zuckerberg himself was summoned to two US congressional hearings and just yesterday, to the much better prepared European Parliament lawmakers to explain what exactly had happened along with the steps Facebook was taking to prevent it from happening again.

Here are some of my general thoughts in no particular order. Continue reading “Time to stop pointing fingers at Facebook and take some responsibility ourselves.”

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Global internet statistics for 2018

Global Internet User Distribution

It’s that time of year again when digital stats aggregators update their numbers and various annual summary reports come out based on research conducted in the previous calendar year. Here are a few general highlights I put together recently after going through various reports.  If you’re interested in the data sources, I covered my favourites in this blog post last year.  Most have now come out with 2018 versions of their reports. Continue reading “Global internet statistics for 2018”