Recently, two ridiculous, antiquated requests have been made of me in order to verify my identity to two companies that I like: Twitter and Target. I somewhat understand the fax requirement for a Twitter impersonation report so I’ll focus on Target. (FYI I’m the real @emilybinder and @adoreajabakery and @thedigitaldive_. If any other handle claims to be me, it’s not me: I wouldn’t set up a handle that required a number on the end because my desired name was taken. I would find another handle. I don’t do numbers on the end.)
A couple weeks ago, I signed up for a Target RedCard in-store. I applaud Target on the convenient offering of quick sign-up with the cashier by providing a blank check and a driver’s license: no forms or visiting guest services.
Annoyance #1: Lack of Internal System Network Cohesion
The RedCard account must be set up with the address on the customer’s driver’s license. Mine happens to be my old address. The cashier couldn’t enter another address or update it after setup. She instructed me to call the RedCard 800 number immediately afterward and request an address change so that Target wouldn’t mail my new card to my old address. My blank check — tied to a bank account with what is necessarily a more reliable current address than the one on a driver’s license which doesn’t expire for years — should have sufficed for proof of address.
Annoyance #2: Human Error Followed by Outsourced Customer Service Giving Dangerous Instructions
I called the RedCard 800 number and asked to change my address. The lady in India asked for my driver’s license number, which I read aloud. It did not match my account: the cashier had mistyped my DL number. The lady said that since she could not verify that I was the account holder, she could not change my address. For that to happen, I would need to send a letter in the paper mail to Target headquarters including:
- name
- old address
- current address
- driver’s license number
- social security number
- last four digits of new Target RedCard
She did not instruct me to explain the situation – just to list these things.
A of all, that is a joke if you think I’m sending my social through the paper mail to your PO box.
B of all, I told her that, and she said, “Okay, you can exclude it.”
Identity Theft
But her protocol was to tell the customer to send the above and nothing else. That would be a great formula for
1) no action due to lack of context
2) identity theft with that piece of paper floating around Minneapolis
Some customers are ignorant though, and would have followed those instructions. NEVER GIVE YOUR FULL SOCIAL unless you truly need to and you’re dealing with a trusted government entity or a bank, for example. Every single time a company or office has requested my social, I’ve refused and they’ve said it wasn’t necessary after all. Comforting. Keep it secret keep it safe. -My high school
I couldn’t print that day. So I, Emily Binder, hand wrote the letter. To make a petulant point about how ludicrous this was. After filling two sides of a page (many details to cover by this point) I finished with, “Please call or email me to confirm your receipt and processing of my request.” (That never happened.)
The Outcome
Two weeks after sending the letter, no card. I called the main Target customer service number. The system required entry of the last four of my RedCard and social. The lady who answered sounded like she was in Minneapolis. Great, maybe she will actually be able to update her own company’s system that she is staring at right now. She said the account showed my current address and that my card was just mailed. So my handwritten letter worked, which blows my mind. (I hand wrote it because I expected my request to fall into the void and I planned to later complain that I was merely providing information in the 1800s format they requested.)
Why couldn’t the outsourced RedCard 800 number customer service rep use the same credentials to verify me and change my address on that first day?
My letter provided no new (or verified) information that I wasn’t telling her over the phone or that I couldn’t email. At least with an email, the sender’s identity is somewhat traceable. USPS does not require a return address. Anyone could have sent Target a letter from “Emily Binder” and given any address where my card would then be sent to a scam artist. Note: Target still sent a RedCard to my old address.
The Customer
Do not burden the customer. If an onerous hard copy type of action is needed, there better be a good reason why electronic submission would not suffice. It’s ludicrous for anyone to think that fraud is any less likely by requiring a customer to print and put a stamp on the same letter they would otherwise email. Even if it includes a scan of a photo ID. It’s a scan. This mailing a letter ballyhoo is simply a waste of paper, time, and resources and in fact creates a greater chance of identity theft because there is a paper trail. Or, for the unfortunate ignorant or trusting customers in my position, it creates paper floating around with the customer’s full social security number on it. This 5% off all purchases better be worth it.
Recent Posts
Podcast: Play in new window
Video playback slow? Stream audio only here.
The Digital Dive celebrates our 20th episode with a special video podcast. Millennials: scrutinized, fascinating, controversial. A bunch of overly coddled narcissists? Or the highly educated, tolerant, tech-savvy hope for our future? Our familiar voices can now be seen in action as we report on Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr and tackle the ever-controversial subject of the Millennial Generation.
I. In a bold move (that follows Google’s and Facebook’s acquisitions of startups in hopes of gaining an edge), Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Yahoo officially announced Monday, May 20, 2013. A popular social blogging hub for photos and funny gifs, and a major meme birthplace, six-year old Tumblr has ~900 posts a second with 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 sign-ups every day. It also does not have a revenue model, much like Instagram, which Facebook acquired in 2012 for about $1 billion in cash and stock. Tumblr is highly mobile and has a young user base, in contrast to Yahoo’s older users. Tumblr could help Yahoo compete with Facebook and Google in the social networking space.
II. The Millennial Generation: In the wake of the controversial Time magazine article Millennials: the Me Me Me Generation by Joel Stein, we discuss some of the most prevalent complaints and praises of the most talked about generation since the Baby Boomers, along with a few surprising statistics about work ethic, narcissism, and tattoos.
Referenced in this episode:
1. The Pew Research Center’s comprehensive 2010 report: Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change. 2/4/10
2. David McCullough Jr.’s controversial “You Are Not Special” commencement speech 6/7/12
Tips on Tap:
I. Artsy iPad cover: GelaSkins. Wraps front and back of iPad with your chosen artist’s design. Get free matching wallpaper for your screen. $29.95
II. Houzz – Landscaping, decorating and home design app.
III. 
Cool alternative to a business card: Custom Inspector Stamp is a keychain stamp by Mikey Burton in collaboration with Cranky Pressman. The Salem, Ohio based online letterpress service was founded by its original owners in 1934. Read more about Cranky Pressman.
Infographic about Millennials (click on the image to view it in full): Caveat: we are also coddled narcissists who did not play enough dodgeball in gym class.
______
You can download or stream The Digital Dive Podcast at thedigitaldivepodcast.com or search for us in the iTunes Podcast Directory–> If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
The Digital Dive Podcast is on Stitcher, the best free podcast streaming app. New to Stitcher? Please sign up with our link:
The Digital Dive PodcastTM: Get the most out of technology… without ever fully giving in
“We should stop asking, ‘how do we make people pay for music?’ and start asking, ‘how do we let people pay for music?‘” -Amanda Palmer, TED Talk: The art of asking (February 2013). I don’t want to discuss Palmer’s controversial, record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, which asked for $100,000 and ended up generating $1.2M from 25,000 fans. What’s more interesting is the paradigm shift in the music industry that most markedly began with Radiohead’s 2007 free digital release of their newest album. Artists are asking and fans are giving. Sometimes.
Palmer’s opposite of Metallica M.O. is more salient to the reality of music consumption today than the traditional pricing, touring, and record label model. In a vacuum of capitalism where the Internet didn’t allow such easy piracy, standard pricing and control over content would make sense like it used to. But we don’t have a vacuum, and smart artists adapt.
Radiohead Let Us Pay
Public Enemy (1999 – paid download), Smashing Pumpkins (2000 – free download), Radiohead (2007 – free download), Trent Reznor (2008), Amanda Palmer and others have released their music first online with varying price structures before iTunes Store opened on April 28, 2003. But in 2007, iTunes had just become the third largest music retailer in the U.S. and online music was exploding. Radiohead blazed the trail on October 10, 2007 in the first major album release in which consumers could name their own price. Radiohead’s contract with their label EMI ended after 2003′s Hail to the Thief. After four years of turning down offers from other labels, in October 2007 Radiohead took a bold step in releasing their next album independently and digitally with a pay-what-you-want model.
Thom Yorke told Time,
“I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say ‘F*** you’ to this decaying business model.”
Radiohead beat the album leakers to the punch by basically leaking their own album. Fans went to the band’s website inrainbows.com to download the 15-song MP3s. Big Radiohead fans, my college roommate and I were blown away and totally impressed when we clicked the download button and saw the prompt “It’s Up To You.” Click again and it refreshed with, “It’s Really Up To You.”
“People made their choice to actually pay money,” [Radiohead manager Chris] Hufford said. “It’s people saying, ‘We want to be part of this thing.’ If it’s good enough, people will put a penny in the pot.”
The CD release followed at the end of 2007. A year later, In Rainbows had sold more than 300 million copies worldwide in digital and physical formats.
Creative musicians will continue to find ways to circumvent the technology that has made it irresistably easy to pirate their music. But Amanda Palmer’s asking/giving/taking and Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want models aren’t new; they are a return to the organic way street musicians and entertainers exchanged their art with others, as Palmer points out in her TED Talk.
Now We Expect Free Music
Following In Rainbows, in November 2008 Trent Reznor took a shot at a different online release model when he co-wrote and produced Saul Williams’s album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust. Fans could download it for free or pay $5 for a higher quality version. The results were disappointing. As of January 2, 2008, 154,449 people had downloaded NiggyTardust and 28,322 of them paid the $5.
… the way things are, I think music should be looked at as free. It basically is. The toothpaste is out of the tube and a whole generation of people is accustomed to music being that way. There’s a perception that you don’t pay for music when you hear it on the radio or MySpace. -Trent Reznor, cnet.com
Radiohead’s free offering compelled us to pay a $2.26 average, but Reznor’s tiered free/premium model had less lucrative results at first.
For artists to follow Radiohead’s model en masse with success, our entire culture of music consumption would need to resemble the one Amanda Palmer champions. Unlikely for now, and unfathomable for less famous bands without dedicated followings and years of successful marketing and albums behind them.
I haven’t bought a hard copy album in years. The last I can remember was Tool’s 10,000 Days in 2007. The unique hardcover album case with stereoscopic glasses and Alex Grey’s art was simply incredible (and it won the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package). I have dabbled in iTunes and Amazon MP3 purchases but the closed environment and lack of ownership always bothered me. You’re leasing, not buying. I have no need to illegally download music now. Spotify is revolutionary. And mind-bogglingly cheap for the universal multi-device access you get to nearly all recorded music. Spotify hardly pays the artists, but overall it’s a more reasonable solution to the problem at hand than expecting consumers who won’t pony up $5 for an album to keep paying 99 cents a song. Maybe the Spotify model will make fans more willing to pay in other ways. It’s certainly the most convenient and instant access I’ve ever had to music, especially brand new music. Plus, with the Copyright Alert System, who wants to risk illegal downloads anyway? Instead, I’ll attend concerts and — after our Digital Dive Podcast interview with Zoroaster’s Dan Scanlan — I’ll buy plenty of merch.
Sources
Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want. Time, 10/1/2007
Public Enemy Makes Friends Online. EW, 5/14/1999
Pay What You Want for this Article. NY Times, 12/9/2007
Podcast: Play in new window
Topics
- In response to Netflix‘s exclusive programming featuring their hit series House of Cards, Amazon announced in March 2013 that they were creating a Zombieland pilot. On April 19, 2013 they released Amazon Original Series as fourteen original pilots available free to Amazon Prime members. Users vote on their favorites and Amazon will likely produce two winners as full series. I share my thoughts on House of Cards and two of the Amazon pilots: Those Who Can’t and Betas. Follow-up from Episode 14. P.S. Downton Abbey fans, by the end of 2013, Prime Instant Video will be the only paid streaming service to offer Downton Abbey. Hulu Plus and Netflix are out.
- Google Now comes to iOS. Available since July 2012 for some Android users, Apple device owners now have access to the clairvoyant Google Now by signing into one’s Google account in the free Google app for iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
The nascent Google Now is a more predictive digital assistant in ways that Siri can’t compete. Because Google records its users’ actions in all of its products (from web search to Maps to Gmail to Google+ and more) it has access to massive amounts of data and can triangulate personal information, behavior patterns, calendar events, contacts and more. There is major potential for Google Now. Some users have concerns over privacy issues. But personally, I’m happy to benefit from the data I’m already sharing with Google in exchange for predictive, personalized assistance. How will Apple and Facebook compete? - Instagram app update: 5/3/13: Now you can tag other Instagram users in photos like you tag friends in Facebook photos. Tags must be approved.
- Best Brands on Twitter: Social Media startup Nestivity released their list of the top 25 most engaged brands on Twitter – we look at the top 10 and why they are successful.
About the List:
- Brands were selected based on the results of a study that examined how brands cultivate relationships with influencers, customers, and advocates on Twitter.
- Primarily using push marketing on Twitter doesn’t work (obviously)
- Conducted by Evolve Capital Inc. (private equity firm) and UCLA Anderson School of Management, the study looked at the top 100 most-followed brands on Twitter, analyzing over 739,000 tweets over one month.
- Significant: study was backed by a private equity/venture capital fund. Investors are paying attention and putting money into researching the success of brands on Twitter. Investor attention is often a barometer of the times; the players who have a major say in the lifespan and ultimate success of companies and industries are making a real connection between brand engagement on Twitter and a company’s bottom line.
- High follower count also did not necessarily equate with an engaged audience: “While all of the 25 most engaged Twitter accounts had over a million followers, so did the bottom 70% of the same.”
- 76% of content that was shared (RT’d) had a photo attached, and 18% had a video.
Top 10 Brands on Twitter:
- Notebook of Love
- Disneywords
- ESPN
- Playstation
- Disney
- Chelsea Football Club
- BBC Breaking News
- NASA
- CNN Breaking News
Tips on Tap:
- Twitter Keyboard Shortcuts:
M = new direct message
N= new tweet
R = reply
T = retweet
GR = Mentions
GH = Home
GM – Messages
. = load new tweets - Tips to resize and optimize layout of web images:
A. Two free tools to resize web images: Picresize and Resize Your Image
B. When resizing, choose small file sizes: Upload a PNG or JPG not too much larger than your desired image size. Choose PNG or JPG over BMP as the file format. Your site load times will benefit.
B. Have subjects (people, animals, products, etc.) facing in toward the block of text instead of outward and away from the text. - Smartskin Condoms for Smartphones
Sex sells. This thermoplastic skin slips on and stretches to fit and protect your iPhone 4/4s/5 or Galaxy S3. Water-resistant plastic wraps retain touchscreen and call functionality and 98% camera clarity. Note that neither headphones nor cables can be used with Smartskin. Up to three uses per tab/pack. Smartskin from Firebox costs $18.50.
Show Notes:
- Emily’s app recommendation for recording a podcast on iPad: Voice Record Pro (free app to record unlimited length with conversion to MP3 and share to Dropbox, Google Drive, soundcloud, email, Facebook etc.)
- Amazon Studios unveils 14 original pilots -CBS News, 4/19/13
- Google Now is one step ahead -The Boston Globe Techlab, 5/9/13
- 25 Of The Most Engaged Brands On Twitter -Mashable, 4/25/13
- 25 Clever Twitter Keyboard Shortcuts -Mashable, 2/20/13
- ‘Zombieland’ Pilot Debuts On Amazon, Viewers Can Vote For Their Favorite Series -Huffington Post, 4/19/13
- Five Quick Tips On Choosing And Creating Images For Your Website Or Blog -socialmediarevolver, 4/25/13
______
You can download or stream The Digital Dive Podcast at thedigitaldivepodcast.com or search for us in the iTunes Podcast Directory–> If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
The Digital Dive Podcast is on Stitcher, the best free podcast streaming app. New to Stitcher? Please sign up with our link:
The Digital Dive PodcastTM: Get the most out of technology… without ever fully giving in
Podcast: Play in new window
News reports of major corporations falling victim to cyber attacks flood the media. What does this mean for us as individuals? As consumers? As a society? How serious a threat are we facing, and how much of it is media hype?
I. Boston Marathon Bombing media coverage: Twitter’s integral role. From helping runners notify their loved ones amid the chaos, to hospitals communicating occupancy information, to the Boston Police Department announcing the capture of the suspect — Twitter played an important role in the devastating event. To find out ways to help the victims, click here.
II. Spamhaus and other recent/notable cyber attacks. The list of companies that have fallen victim to cyber attacks reads like a Fortune 50 list — Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times, Sony, and even government entities such as the US Federal Reserve, South Korea, North Korea, etc. have reported major security breaches linked to hackers. Recently, the infamous Spamhaus attack caused a global Internet slow-down by what some experts are calling the biggest cyber attack in history. Click here to see the Cyberbunker building image referenced.
III. Portrait of a Hacker. So, who are the men and women behind cyber attacks? Melanie and Emily discuss hacking history, a common type of attack (denial-of-service attack, or DDoS), and three types of hackers: ethical hackers, hacktavists, and organized cyber crime groups. Is there a such thing as a good hacker?
IV. What we’re doing about it. Governments and corporate executives are beginning to realize the severity of a potential cyber attack. We review the ways the EU, U.S., and others are taking protective initiatives.
Tips on Tap
I. FireMe! App – New app which tracks certain negative phrases about bosses and jobs in social media and rates how likely they are to get the poster fired.
II. Vine – My love/hate relationship with Vine, a sometimes bagbiter new Twitter-owned social media platform that allows users to create six-second looping video mash-ups. Less than three months after its January 2013 release, the video-sharing service topped the U.S. App Store’s list of free iPhone apps. I found one paragraph of John Constine’s 4/20/13 techcrunch article about Vine quite poignant about the general experience of using smartphones to memorialize moments in our lives:
It’s when Vines disintegrate that I get truly angry, though. It’s blatant violation of the implicit value exchange between a human and an app. Rather than live a moment, I recorded it. When I ended up with nothing to show for it, I feel cheated.
III. Shopping for Flights Online: When to Buy – Melanie offers tips on how and when to get the best deal on airfare online.
______
You can download or stream The Digital Dive Podcast at thedigitaldivepodcast.com or search for us in the iTunes Podcast Directory–> If you like the show, please subscribe and/or leave us a review!
The Digital Dive Podcast is on Stitcher, the best free podcast streaming app. New to Stitcher? Please sign up with our link:
The Digital Dive PodcastTM: Get the most out of technology… without ever fully giving in
Podcast: Play in new window
This week on the Digital Dive, we discuss the way technology has radically changed the world of dating and relationships – for better and for worse. Take a walk through the good, the bad, and the ugly ways that social media, online dating sites, search engines, and apps impact the experience of romance in modern culture. Is the level of transparency afforded by technology a good thing?
I. “Facebook me.” – When first meeting, how soon should you share your social profile? Is sharing a social profile more intimate than sharing a phone number? (I say yes.)
II. Online dating websites – The popularity of online dating sites has ballooned over the past few years, and the average age of users is dropping. Melanie and I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of meeting organically vs. meeting online. Is there still a stigma to online dating?
III. Breaking up digitally - “Out of sight, out of mind”is increasingly difficult as individual online presences grow. Avoiding an ex online can be almost impossible when you have mutual friends. Listen for websites and apps that can help ease the pain.
Tips on Tap:
I. Block Your Ex - Browser add on that blocks you from seeing your ex on social media, search engines, and blog networks. blockyourex.com
II. Never Liked it Anyway - Online marketplace to sell gifts from exes that are too hard to keep. neverlikeditanyway.com
III. What to do if your site gets hacked: Informative videos from Google Webmaster.
______
You can download or stream The Digital Dive Podcast at thedigitaldivepodcast.com or search for us in the iTunes Podcast Directory–> If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
The Digital Dive Podcast is on Stitcher, the best free podcast streaming app. New to Stitcher? Please sign up with our link:
The Digital Dive PodcastTM: Get the most out of technology… without ever fully giving in
Obviously social media opens new doors for marketers, but it also provides us with new sociological survey data. Only the subjects aren’t aware they’re being studied. It’s like that valid research method, natural observation. If inherently subjective ethnographies based on very small sample sizes are valid in anthropology and I am a technological anthropologist (Angela Natividad’s wonderful term) then surely I can liken all U.S. or global Twitter users to a tribe. I can measure their operationally defined behaviors in their natural habitat, the Twitterverse. This is the new anthro.
This stems from reading a recent study by the Vermont Complex Systems Center, who created a “hedonometer” for 10 million geotagged tweets:
The Geography of Happiness According to 10 Million Tweets - TheAtlantic.com, 2/19/13
(First I must note the correlation between religiosity in the Bible Belt and lack of happiness.)
Second, this is not the first study to link Twitter sentiment to mood:
Traders seem convinced that social chatter from a specific group or about a specific event (like a new Apple product or changing Netflix service) can be a predictor of where stocks are headed. Yet it was more than a year ago when Indiana University’s Johan Bollen found that his team’s Twitter sentiment analysis predicts changes in the market with 87.6 percent accuracy…. his work suggests that collective social mood leads the DJIA closing values by a few days’ time.
Bollen’s findings suggest that mass Twitter sentiment can predict the economy. There is validity to such studies despite the inherent sample bias.
What should be explored is that with Twitter, we can endeavor to gauge sentiment for groups on such a larger scale than is possible with typical surveys and limited sample size. This is what Bollen is doing with computational social sciences – and this is so important for marketers. Think neuromarketing. Granted, you’re only getting subjects who use Twitter – huge caveat. In certain states, depending on culture, it’s possible that Twitter tends to be used by people who are happier, sadder, or who tweet certain trigger words more often.
Mississippi is one of if not the nation’s poorest state. That must contribute to it being the #2 saddest. But the economically depressed state of my alma mater, Michigan, may be even sadder and they don’t have Southern cooking to eat their feelings. You are what you eat…
If I were a food marketer, I would go to town over this kind of data. Market your product as a solution to three struggling economic problems to start:
1. Lack of happy sentiment in the aggregate
2. Loss of community pride
3. Need for grocery value in communities with high unemployment rates
And as one might predict,
…happiness data correlates with income and the prevalence of obesity in an area.
Not hard to figure out those relationships: less education –> lower income and less knowledge and culturally sanctioned attention paid to nutrition
Lower income –> likely to only afford less nutritious food
Eat too much unhealthy food –> gain weight, have more (expensive) health problems, feel depressed emotionally, physically, and economically.
All –> tweet sadder.
On with the social-as-qualified-sociology:
- Financial difficulties do not preclude Twitter use as many might guess – look at the rise of mobile-only households in lower income brackets. It’s also possible that even if mostly middle to upper class residents use Twitter, the general morale of an economically depressed state would make even those who are financially stable tweet more sadly.
- Also, marketers who target angry and/or crass customers (with something like anger-management products): play up the offensive in your ad copy, you’ll be speaking your customers’ language and mirroring is effective:
For individual cities, the Vermont researchers note, the amount of swearing contributed substantially to their final scores. They think it’s worth investigating this phenomenon, which they call “geoprofanity.”
In Jill Noble’s 2011 interview with Johan Bollen, he explains the unique opportunity that Twitter offers as a glimpse into immediate, focused, raw emotional output. With limited characters and the immediacy of tweeting (especially on mobile) it offers a more targeted and insightful view into millions of everyday moods as they change around the globe.
Podcast: Play in new window
Lucky episode 15 of The Digital Dive Podcast covers the Center for Internet Security’s new Copyright Alert System, an ISP-backed online piracy crackdown effort, plus Microsoft’s launch of Outlook.com email which could wage war on Gmail.
I. The 6 Strikes Copyright Alert System – MPAA Got Time For That
Appearing before your DVD feature film, the much-loved PSA from MPAA’s “Piracy — It’s a Crime” campaign c. 2005
The Copyright Alert System – A collaboration between the Center for Copyright Information, the MPAA, RIAA, and Internet service providers aimed at curbing illegal downloads of copyrighted content. Watch the CAS Process video.
- What it means for users, peer to peer downloads, online piracy, and your home Internet account status and speed. Remember, email and Dropbox etc. are safe from the CAS monitoring. However, MPAA and RIAA got time for that when it’s P2P.
II. Outlook.com
- If you are a user of Hotmail, MSN or other Microsoft email services you will (if you haven’t already) notice a major change: When you sign in, you’re sent to a new service called Outlook.com.
- “Outlook? As in what I use at work?” Yes. But Microsoft is now adapting the Outlook brand for personal, web-based email services as well. It’s part of a broad makeover that includes the company’s overhaul of the Windows operating system and the Office software suite. Office.com is set to rival Google Drive, and with the other fully integrated features of Microsoft Outlook and Office on the web:
- Outlook.com is a challenge to Gmail in several ways, including these touted benefits:
- Email content will not be used to target ads (something many users don’t like about Gmail)
- Outlook integrates with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter
- Users can alternate email addresses without signing up for additional accounts
- Customizable filters like “shipping updates”
- Clear the trash can and still have a chance to recover deleted emails from the server
Tips on Tap
- Slice – this free app “keeps track of what you buy, effortlessly” using your email inbox. Slice tracks your shipments, online orders, and triggers alerts when items you have recently purchased go on sale. For iPhone, Android, and web.
- Blackl.com – a “green” search engine powered by Google, Blackl is essentially Google search in your browser on a black background. AMOLED screens use a lot less power displaying black instead of white. (AMOLED = Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode, the technology used in most smartphone screens.)
- How to Evade the Copyright Alert System (CAS): The most obvious solution: Stream, don’t download. Jared Moya offers four more workarounds including Usenet, upgrading your residential account to a business account, and using a VPN. – zeropaid.com, 2/26/13
______
You can download or stream The Digital Dive Podcast at thedigitaldivepodcast.com or search for us in the iTunes Podcast Directory–> If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
The Digital Dive Podcast is on Stitcher, the best free podcast streaming app. If you’re new to Stitcher, please sign up with our link below.
