Walgreens, the country's largest drug store chain, wants to bring doctors onto your iPhone to deliver real, live video chat appointments. Walgreens has inked a deal with a company called MDLive to give pharmacy customers access to doctors over a secure video line. The idea, which the chain will pilot in California and Michigan, aims to have doctors available around-the-clock, offering virtual appointments at hours when offices tend to be closed.
[Commentary] The Google-Apple smartphone war is much more complex competition than simple market-share numbers suggest.
Globally, handsets running Google’s Android operating system absolutely dominate the smartphone market, with somewhere between 80 percent and 85 percent market share. It’s important to recognize that Apple and Google aren’t direct competitors in the smartphone market. Google doesn’t make phones, it licenses a no-cost mobile operating system -- Android -- and produces apps for that system and for Apple’s. Apple, instead, makes money on the phones themselves, which are a combination of its hardware, software and cloud services. So far, it looks as though both Google and Apple can thrive with these different models.
A new study from mobile ad tech firm Marchex found the number of new cable subscribers requesting only Internet service is outpacing the number that are asking only for video service.
The findings also show that consumers are steering clear of long-term contracts and are seeking content a la carte, or at least are searching for more personalized and customized bundles. From a content perspective, the numbers indicate that pay-TV providers (such as Comcast) should create programming packages for consumers’ evolving tastes because they now have the power to get what they want from other sources as over-the-top services (like Roku) grow in popularity.
A majority of mobile device users around the world consume significantly greater amounts of cellular data following the introduction of an integrated Wi-Fi and cellular service.
Data gathered from Devicescape’s ABC (Always Best Connected) Wi-Fi service platform revealed a 17 percent increase in billable monthly cellular data use from 64 percent of end users. Given automated access to the best available networks, end users ‘super-sized’ their overall data consumption.” The average user’s combined cellular and Wi-Fi data consumption rose 48 percent within three months, according to the company. Mobile operators have long worried that Wi-Fi use will cannibalize cellular data, but, as these figures show, the opposite is true.
[Commentary] After leading with a report on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s scathing report on CIA torture -- and then airing an old interview with then-CIA director George Tenet -- anchor Scott Pelley sat down with Michael Morell, CBS’ Senior Security Contributor, to discuss the matter. But Morell, a former CIA deputy director and acting director, wasn’t there to offer unbiased and expert perspective on the torture report. He was there to defend it.
The decision to put him in the interview chair had Pelley doing journalistic back-flips explaining just which hat Morell was wearing during the conversation. Morrell went from acting director of the CIA to CBS News Senior Security Contributor then back to CIA spokesman and then back again as Senior Security Contributor. It further blurs the already woozy line between network news and government spin.
A New York man who ran a small Internet company has sued the Justice Department to lift a 10-year-old gag order that accompanied a national security order served on him by the FBI for a customer’s records.
In the lawsuit, Nicholas Merrill charged that the US government has violated his First Amendment rights by imposing what he says amounts to a permanent gag order forbidding him from speaking about a national security letter he received in 2004 -- even though the underlying investigation has apparently ended. In particular, Merrill wants to be able to talk about the specific types of records the government demanded that he disclose, which he refused to do.
Mass online surveillance and censorship of what people see on the web appear to be getting worse, according to the latest Web Index report. This trend, along with the paucity of network neutrality rules around the world, has led web inventor Tim Berners-Lee to call for the Internet to be made a basic human right.
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) attempted to mount an eleventh-hour bid to kill the spies' funding bill, writing that the intelligence authorization bill that easily passed through the House contained “one of the most egregious sections of law I've encountered during my time as a representative.”
“It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American,” explained Rep Amash, who has a record of skepticism toward the National Security Agency and other agencies. The bill was originally set to be considered with just a simple voice vote, but Rep Amash rushed to the House floor to demand a recorded vote. He also fired off a letter to his fellow lawmakers warning them not to back the bill.
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in a 4-3 decision that law enforcement can search someone’s phone when they get arrested -- but that such a search must be directly connected to that arrest and the officers must keep detailed notes.
Canada's Competition Bureau is investigating allegations that Apple's Canadian unit used anti-competitive clauses in contracts with domestic wireless carriers. The bureau stressed that, so far, it has no evidence that Apple has contravened any rules and that it has not filed any application with the Competition Tribunal or any other court to seek remedies for any alleged anti-competitive conduct.
© 1994-2024 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.
