November 2014

What retailers need to know about mobile this holiday season

Sales will increase more than four percent this holiday season over 2013, the National Retail Federation predicted, and mobile devices will play a larger role than ever in how US consumers shop: 56 percent of smartphone owners plan to use their devices in some way to help them shop during the holidays. Retailers should be focusing on a few crucial areas: 1) Maintain a quality mobile website. 2) Leverage apps by engaging with users. 3) Embrace showrooming. 4) Use beacon-based campaigns judiciously.

Governing the Smart, Connected City

As politics at the federal level becomes increasingly corrosive and polarized, with trust in Congress and the President at historic lows, Americans still celebrate their cities. And cities are where the action is when it comes to using technology to thicken the mesh of civic goods -- more and more cities are using data to animate and inform interactions between government and citizens to improve wellbeing. Every day, I learn about some new civic improvement that will become possible when we can assume the presence of ubiquitous, cheap, and unlimited data connectivity in cities. Some of these are made possible by the proliferation of smartphones; others rely on the increasing number of internet-connected sensors embedded in the built environment. In both cases, the constant is data.

Former NSA lawyer: the cyberwar is between tech firms and the US government

The battle over encryption of consumer internet users’ data has pitched US technology companies against the US government itself, said former National Security Agency general counsel Stewart Baker.

Baker claimed that moves by Google and Apple and others to encrypt user data was more hostile to western intelligence gathering than to surveillance by China or Russia. “The state department has funded some of these tools, such as Tor, which has been used in Arab Spring revolutions or to get past the Chinese firewall, but these crypto wars are mainly being fought between the American government and American companies,” he said. Baker said encrypting user data had been a bad business model for Blackberry, which has had to dramatically downsize its business and refocus on business customers. He claimed that by encrypting user data Blackberry had limited its business in countries that demand oversight of communication data, such as India and the UAE and got a bad reception in China and Russia.

Cable Under Fire: Plunge in Ratings Could Spell Trouble for Top Nets

Virtually all of cable’s top entertainment outlets have suffered double-digit ratings declines so far this year — drops that are particularly pronounced in the C3 ratings (live broadcast, plus three days of playback on DVR after the original airing) that are the currency of advertising sales. But the headwinds that Big Cable faces are much stronger than what might be deemed as a cyclical drop in viewership.

In short, the most established players -- think USA Network, Syfy, TNT, TBS, A&E, Lifetime, MTV, Discovery, FX, AMC, ABC Family, among others -- are starting to grapple with the issues of audience erosion, rising programming costs and heightened competition for ad dollars that have bedeviled the Big Four broadcast nets for more than 20 years. Nobody’s suggesting that basic cable has suddenly become a bad business. But Wall Street’s bearishness on domestic growth prospects for cable has amounted to a sharp 90-degree turn after years of fawning over the sector. Showbiz’s largest conglomerates -- Disney, Time Warner, Comcast, Fox and Viacom -- are deeply dependent on the reliable cash flow from cable channels at home and abroad to pump up earnings. Cable execs are accustomed to leading divisions that are the heroes of quarterly-earnings reports.

Hardly anyone makes calls on pay phones. Here’s how they make money anyway

Why not just get rid of all the pay phones in New York City? Why hang on to a dying technology? Even though they're steadily dwindling in number, pay phones aren't dying.

That's because companies are starting to realize there are more ways to make a profit from pay phones than charging users to place a call. Take, for example, the power of advertisement. While revenue generated from calls placed has steadily declined since 2008, ad revenue generated from pay phones -- the ads placed on the sides and walls of pay phone booths -- has seen a sharp uptick since 2010. There's also potential money to be made from turning the phones into Wi-Fi hotspots. CBS Outdoor has outfitted 35 pay phones with such capabilities, and is currently trying to find ways to monetize this Wi-Fi via sponsorships.

Privacy groups demand second look at merger

The Center for Digital Democracy and US PIRG called on the Federal Trade Commission to take a second look at its decision to approve a marketing corporation merger. The groups told the FTC that the $2.3 billion merger of direct marketing company Alliance Data Systems with Conversant -- a digital marketing company formerly known as ValueClick -- “raises serious privacy concerns,” and needs to be readdressed.

The Alex from Target marketing hoax was itself a marketing hoax, because everything on the Internet is a lie

This is confounding, so we’re going to say it slowly:

On Nov 2, a random teenager named Alex became an international meme.
On Nov 4, a heretofore unknown “entertainment network” called Breakr claimed to have orchestrated his fame.
On Nov 5, Alex — and just about everyone else associated with his new stardom — said they didn’t even know Breakr existed.

Which, if you do the math right, amounts to a marketing hoax about a marketing hoax about a stupefyingly silly meme, because everything on the Internet is a lie, and humanity is just spinning out into a vortex of clicky, nihilistic idiocy. Or something! What actually happened with #AlexfromTarget, in offline, immutable reality? No one knows. It’s impossible to say.

Tribal Mobility Fund Phase I Support For Fifty-One Winning Bids Ready to be Authorized

By this Public Notice, the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Wireline Competition Bureau announce they are ready to authorize Mobility Fund Phase I support for the Auction 902 winning bids. To be authorized to receive the support, the winning bidder identified in that attachment is required to submit for each of its specified winning bids an acceptable irrevocable stand-by letter of credit (LOC) and Bankruptcy Code opinion letter from its legal counsel in accordance with the instructions by the applicable deadline -- 6:00 p.m.

Tribal Mobility Fund Phase I Support For Eleven Winning Bids Ready to be Authorized

By this Public Notice, the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Wireline Competition Bureau announce they are ready to authorize Mobility Fund Phase I support for the Auction 902 winning bids. To be authorized to receive the support, the winning bidder identified in that attachment is required to submit an acceptable irrevocable stand-by letter of credit (LOC) and Bankruptcy Code opinion letter from its legal counsel in accordance with the instructions provided below by the applicable deadline – 6:00 p.m. ET on November 14, 2014.

Cindy Cohn to Become EFF's New Executive Director in 2015

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Director Cindy Cohn will become EFF's new executive director in April, after Executive Director Shari Steele steps down from the post she's held for 14 years.

Cohn has been involved with EFF for over 20 years, first working on Bernstein v. Department of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. In 2000, Cohn became legal director, and her work included spearheading EFF's groundbreaking lawsuits challenging the NSA's illegal mass surveillance of Americans and people around the world. She has been named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America in addition to numerous other honors. EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry will take over as legal director.

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