Summer, spring, winter and now fear! Call it world events — or how desperate marketers and politicians are to gain leverage in a competitive world; but the big story this fall will all the things that scare your audience to death.
Summer, spring, winter and now fear! Call it world events — or how desperate marketers and politicians are to gain leverage in a competitive world; but the big story this fall will all the things that scare your audience to death.
Here’s our list of what most worthy of worry.
1) Honey, I shrunk the data: encrypted USB drives saves your digital behinds.
The single best thing you can do for your audience this fall is to get them to buy an encrypted universal serial bus data drive. These small drives plug into any computer and can store all your files, music and some photos. These drive are small. They can fit on your key chain or palm of your hand.
And they are secure. They require codes or fingerprint identification to restore their information.
Some drives even go the next step: they travel with your desktop. That’s right, when you sit down at any computer, and you plug in one of these drives, that computer becomes your computer. Portable USB drives are a great way to keep some privacy at the office.
Particularly if you can someone locally that benefited from keeping there personal photos, music or work files safe, there is no better story on personal safety.
Guard ID.
http://www.guardidsystems.com/
Lexar Jump Drive with fingerprint ID
http://www.lexar.com/jumpdrive/jd_touchguard.html
Kingston Data Traveler Elite.
http://www.kingston.com/flash/dt_elite_privacy.asp
2) Are the kids alright? Family location services will go mainstream.
Several vendors have pushing family location products for the fall. The products range from high-tech global position enabled phones to relatively modest TV based phone-in programs and local tip hotlines.
Family location products make excellent stories, particularly if they tie-in to a local child recovery story; but the products walk a fine line. On one hand, location based services do provide an excellent service. They help busy parent track their kids. We like phone enable tracking. These products work.
But on the other hand, there is that nagging feeling of pandering to the audience. Are we really offering help here, or just supporting a less than honest vendor. By highlighting these products your outlet is tacitly saying, “If you don’t buy this product, imagine how bad you will feel if something terrible happens to your family”
The truly brave enterprise story here would be doing the difficult digging to find out, on statistically valid basis, what the difference in real risk between losing a loved one with or without these tools.
Lost Children Network.
http://lostchildren.org/frame1.htm
MissingKids.com.
http://www.missingkids.com/
Sprint Family Locator.
http://www2.sprint.com/mr/news_dtl.do?id=11280
Wherify.
http://www.wherify.com/
Disney Mobile.
http://disneymobile.go.com/disneymobile/home.do
3) WWW = WOW: World Wide Web now equals Wide Open Web.
We were amazed that America Online’s leak of 658,000 users’ search terms sparked such a flood of coverage. The Web has never been secure. We don’t understand why folks still don’t understand that.
Yet, the stories poured in. In a front-page article last week, the New York Times interviewed someone who’d been exposed. Her searches sought data about diseases, among other things. Someone could have decided she was a hypochondriac. The searches weren’t for her, the woman explained, she had ailing friends and wanted to ease their fears. In an editorial, the San Jose Mercury News, said it’s too easy for people looking at search to draw wrong conclusion: “ … Searches don’t prove anything other than interest,” the paper wrote.
There is coverage in what can consumers do.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called for AOL users to petition the service and demand that it stop keeping search records. This is about as likely as a flipping on the TV and finding a reality show with an engaging story line. The Mercury News chimed in: “People must be able to make queries without fear that the records will be handed over, misconstrued and used against them.” Idealistic, yup. Likely, not today.
Thickening the already thick fear, the Times on Saturday ran a story telling people how an Internet protocol address (think of it as Caller ID for your computer) can tie searches to a person or a subscriber. In the wrong hands, this might be dangerous. The Times noted that the Net has become a sort of place to cure all sorts of stuff, including anxiety over health, and loneliness (so that’s what all those guys visiting porn sites were trying to do).
For better privacy, the Times suggested either trying search engines that claim not to keep records, such as Clusty www.clusty.com and Ixquick www.ixquick.com or try anonymizer sites such as BeHidden.com (http://behidden.com) and The Cloak (www.the-cloak.com).
The post-AOL-leak paranoia may be a little overblown now. But this story points out how hard it may be to keep anything online to yourself. It’s too bad, really. But the Internet, unless it enters some sort of new, encrypted era, will never be a place to hide.
This — we’ll remind you to remind your audience for the millionth time — is particularly true of communication. If someone wants to send a truly private message, nothing but nothing beats old-fashioned paper, pen and stamps.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/9553
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/technology/12tips.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/15265212.htm
4) Cool stuff worth tracking
Segway rolls out two new scooters. Lazy ass nerds rejoice.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/15270049.htm
New headphones from Logitech.
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/news/US/EN,contentid=12625,crid=34
3 Gigabit per segond wireless chips sets from Amimon.
http://www.amimon.com/
SIM2 rolls out single chip projector.
http://www.sim2usa.com/frameset_video_enter.php
Casio ships like a zillion new digicams.
http://www.casio.com/news/content/1B277B33-9DAE-4891-9F52-130C9A23F64D/
Rating commercials goes round and round.
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=46732&Nid=22493&p=287644
5) And finally … don’t think, write.
http://www.oneword.com/
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