What I am reading:
- Is the Star Wars franchise dead? Read on.
- It Costs $2.50 to Make Lipstick — Here’s Why You’re Charged So Much More.
- Ever wonder how Instagram decides what images/videos to show you in your feed? Start here.
- Machine Un-Learning: Why Forgetting Might Be the Key to AI. Read the article.
- Why productivity isn’t the only thing your smartphone is stealing from you. Read the article.
- Wish I had the space for one of these at home 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Check out this vertical farm.
- Soon you’ll be able to control your Xbox using Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. Voice is the new UI. Read the article.
- Cool: How Drones Are Revolutionizing the Way Film and Television is made. Read the article.
- Yikes 🤯🤬 ➡️ A hacker claims to be selling access to Apple internal tools.
- The Scientific Argument for Mastering One Thing at a Time.
- Why are they only now talking about this…. I mean use logic – lot’s of these guys are on your phone out of the box – i.e. you can easily add them through the OS itself… (Android is likely worse). Read the article.
- Looking forward to “dark mode.”
- Not surprised ➡️ A deep learning tool achieved greater accuracy than dermatologists when detecting melanoma in dermoscopic images. Read the article.
- Here’s IBM’s Blueprint for Winning the AI Race. Read the article.
- My guess is NO. ➡️ Is America Ready for the Next Superstorm? Read on.
What I’m Watching:
Been on a diet on this front the last couple of weeks but I realized American Chopper was back on TV again. I loved this program when it was on 10+ years ago (actually I was on board from the very first episode and told everyone I knew about it at the time exclaiming it’s gonna be huge and so would the genre). Happy to see the Teutul’s working out their family issues too.
Check out the new season on Discovery or head over to their app and binge on the first few new episodes.
Purchase I’m Enjoying:
Same story this week – on a extreme budget as of late – I did treat my self to a 3-day pass at the CWCB Expo in New York last week: that paid for itself tenfold in terms of education about the space. I may head to LA for their next one.
What I’m Listening to:
Trying to be uber productive this week so keeping the tunes mellow and have been tuned into a lot of classical music. This playlist on Spotify is excellent.
What’s “in” in social:
Facebook, facebook, facebook…..
Further reading:
- Facebook says it gave Huawei and other Chinese firms access to user data
- Is Facebook’s privacy bombshell good news or bad?
- Facebook’s Privacy Scandal, Part Deux: Company Confirms Data Partnerships With Chinese Companies
- Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends
Strategy Corner:
What’s your voice search strategy?
Up until now, most discussions around Google voice search have been on gathering information and hypothetical scenarios rather than actually performing voice commands with a real-world effect. That all changed with the recent release of Google Duplex announced at this year’s Google I/O conference. Google Duplex, Alphabet’s new voice assistant can carry out “real-world” tasks over the phone, like booking a hair salon appointment or making reservations at a restaurant both exemplified at Google I/O.
Users are mobile now, users want more local results and Google is serving them up a search query (yours perhaps) that can now have real-world actions too.
How are you going to stand out? Will you lose traffic to the website that provides better now “actionable” results? Don’t know where to start?
Start here and simply by optimizing your content for NATURAL & spoken language.
Natural language search isn’t a new concept. Back in the 90s, Ask Jeeves encouraged users to submit searches in question form, instead of using keywords. Unfortunately at the time it just couldn’t compete with more powerful keyword based Google, so searches based on keywords became the norm.
Over time users have learned that more granular searches lead to better results so search algorithms have greatly refined their abilities in this regard. And search engines like Google can now produce relevant results even when the keywords aren’t an exact match. Contextual relevance has become incredibly important to your page ranking: so ranking for pages with long multi-part or even downright wacky questions as keywords will become more of a norm. Take advantage of this opportunity before the rest of the market shifts.
Weekly Hack:
I’ve dumped a bunch of Mac / OSX hacks over the last couple of weeks so this week I’m going to focus on Windows users. Use the “Shake” feature if you have a lot of windows open on your desktop. If you have a display full of windows, clear the clutter by grabbing the top of the window you do like and “shaking” it to minimize all the other windows.
Quote of the week:
To be more childlike, you don’t have to give up being an adult. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously. Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe. – Wayne Dyer