Tag: cell phones

Shoppers Being Tracked By Their Cell Phones, Cool Desk Fans & How Social Media Is Changing Mentorship

Linda Reimer

Shoppers Being Tracked By Their Cell Phones: I came across a New York Times article today that is a bit disturbing. It seems that some brick and mortar stores that are very envious of the way Amazon and other online retailers can see, via the viewing customers do of webpages on their websites and the online purchases of those customers, what items their customers are interested in and then tailor the search results those shoppers see to fit their tastes – the idea of course being that if you show customers things that their purchase and viewing history indicates they like – they’ll be more inclined to buy them. And all of that of course gives online retailers an edge over brick and mortar stores; so some brick and mortar chains have been looking for more high tech ways to compile information about their customers and one of those companies – Nordstrom – instituted a way to track which customers when those customers entered their stores by tracking the Wi-Fi signals of their cell phones.

Granted the Nordstrom posted signs to alert patrons they were doing this – and not surprisingly they had so many complaints from customers that didn’t want their cell phones tracked every time they visited a Nordstrom store that the company ended the experiment after only a few months. However, both the fact that online retailers can gather so much information about customers without their consent and the fact that brick and mortar stores are looking for similar ways to track customers via our Wi-Fi connecting technology does give me pause.

I’m sure most online retailers have some little bits of info at the bottom of their 100 page user agreements (insert little bit of sarcasm here!); but honestly how many people read those multiple page user agreements in their entirety? Most of us simply want to purchase the item we want to buy and get back to our lives not sit in front of a screen for an hour reading through a user agreement.

And that is the long way around the barn of saying that we all need to be aware our rights to privacy are at risk in our increasingly interconnected high tech world.

Here’s a link to the Times article on Nordstrom titled “Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell;”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html?hp&_r=0

Cool Desk Fans: The tech site Mashable offers a fun article today – and a timely one for most of us in the U.S. where it does seem to be an exceptionally hot summer. The article is titled “7 Chic Desk Fans to Keep You Cool” and it offers a slideshow of cool desk fans for all of us who’d like to say cool this summer. They have everything from a solid traditional looking metal fan – the “Charly Little” and the “Hunter Retro Fan” to fancy high tech sci-fi looking fans like Dyson “Air Multiplier” and the “USB Windmill Fan” that latter fan can indeed powered by connecting it to a USB port on your computer.

Here’s the link to the fan a article:

http://mashable.com/2013/07/15/best-table-desk-fans/

How Social Media Is Changing Mentorship: While I was looking at the tech news on the Mashable website I came across an article tilted “How Social Media is Changing Mentorship” which discusses just that subject! How social media is offering more options than ever before for people to be mentored by experts – via – and you guessed it – internet connecting technology. The article isn’t a long one but discusses how can find a mentor on social networking website among other options and how you can connect with your mentor from home while wearing your pjs if you wish!

Here’s the link to the article:  

http://mashable.com/2013/07/14/social-media-mentorship/

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Clifford, Stephanie. & Hardy, Quentin. (2013, July 14). Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell. New York Times. Online. Accessed July 15, 2013.

Pittman, Aaron. (2013, July 14). How Social Media is Changing Mentorship. Mashable. Online. Accessed July 15, 2013. 

Interesting & Fun NPR Article On Pay Phone Use In New York

Linda Reimer

NPR has an interesting and fun article on their website today titled Pay Phones Are Suddenly Important Again Because Of Sandy. The article is fun because of a typo – and as NPR may well catch the typo and revise the text before you read it – here is what the caption currently says under the photo on the NPR technology page – as of 9:55 EST Saturday morning (11-3-12)  it reads: “As some New Yorkers try to stay connected with others, they’ve had to search for pay phones because their cellphones have run out of juice. Question: When was the last time you sued a pay phone?”

Now I don’t know about anyone else but I can’t honestly say that I have ever sued a pay phone.

I’ve never encountered a pay phone that was threatening in any way or in the least bit obnoxious or condescending.

The worst that can be said of any pay phones that I have ever encountered is that I occasionally encountered one that didn’t work or was one that was inconvenient located on the other side of the street.

However, I have never sued a pay phone! How about you?

Here is the link to the NPR Technology page with its charming “sue a pay phone” caption:

http://www.npr.org/sections/technology/

And pasted below is the link to the article itself – which is interesting as it illustrates the point that technological advancement has sped up and really changed our lives in last ten years. And indeed, I can’t remember the last time I used a pay phone but I’d guess it was back in the pre-cell phone days of the 1990s.

And as much as I love technology I do have to say Hurricane and then Storm Sandy gave me pause; because, like many people I didn’t even have a battery operated radio in the house – and if the power had gone out in the City of Corning I’d really have been in the dark.

I do think we should all purchase battery operated radios (and change the batteries in them when we put new batteries in our smoke detectors) and pick up a copy of The New Way Things Work book by David Macaulay just in case we need to operate without electricity for any length of time!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/11/01/164108616/pay-phones-are-suddenly-important-again-because-of-sandy

Have a great day!

Linda R.

And as a post script – since that NPR article on cell phone usage in New York City after Hurricane Sandy was rather brief – albeit humorous – here’s a link to a longer New York Times article on the same subject titled Cellphone Users Steaming at Hit-or-Miss Service:

http://goo.gl/UAzH1