YouTube’s mobile app is getting a dark mode. The company announced this morning its dark theme first introduced on its desktop site last year, is launching today on the YouTube iOS app and arriving soon after on Android. With the setting enabled, YouTube’s background turns from white to black throughout the YouTube experience as you navigate, search and browse its app. The setting… Read More
Try typing “list of Amazon subsidiaries” in Google Search. Watch the carousel of Amazon companies that you may not have heard about at the top of the page. The Amazon Empire may be more interesting than you first thought…
…because Amazon is the Walmart of the future. All of the technologies pioneered by Amazon affect our daily life. Think of how drone deliveries or internet-connected doorbells and security cameras will change our lives. It’s both fantastic and scary. Here are nine popular websites owned by Amazon.
When you search for a movie review, IMDb will pop up first on Google. The Internet Movie Database is an information hose of television shows, movies, and actors. Amazon bought the site to support its online video sales. Since then both have mushroomed and you will probably head to IMDb first before you go to Amazon.
All Amazon Prime subscribers can keep the Amazon Originals page bookmarked. Or keep watching the IMDb Show when you don’t want to read. Amazon Prime’s X-Ray feature, which gives you an inside peek into a movie is also powered by IMDb.
There is also subscription service called IMDbPro which allows subscribers to network with entertainment professionals.
An IMDb tip you can use: The Coming Soon page is a definitive resource to stay updated on movies coming out soon and near you!
If IMDb is the best site for movie reviews, then Goodreads is the town square for hardcore book lovers. Search for your favorite book or even the next book you want to read. The online book club gives you reader opinions from the couch. When Amazon bought Goodreads, it was met with a howl of protests by book lovers. But you can only embrace the benefits.
Goodreads is the best tool to organize your book collection and create a reading list for the future. Find the best-reviewed books and buy them from Amazon. Goodreads on Kindle helps you follow friends and see what they are reading. You can share and rate books right from your Kindle.
A Goodreads tip you can use: The book site has a Giveaway program that can net you free books.
AbeBooks is another online marketplace for books. But so is Amazon. What makes AbeBooks different? The experience!
On AbeBooks, booksellers around the world offer brand new books, used books, rare books, first-editions, textbooks, and out-of-print books for sale. It is a destination for the book lover who is looking for that rare book in the haystack.
AbeBooks is the curio shop while Amazon is the mall. Apart from books offered by independent bookstores, the site also has a Fine Art & Collectibles section. Find old maps, vintage manuscripts, and even photographs. The selections are a collector’s dream.
An AbeBooks tip you can use: Their blog called AbeBooks’ Reading Copy is a hidden gem which you should definitely bookmark.
Comixology is the premier destination for comic book buys and Amazon owns it too. In fact, Comixology Unlimited (for $5.99 per month) can be paired with your Amazon account.
Also, any comic book you buy on Amazon or here can be read with the Comixology apps for Android, iOS, and Kindle Fire. Do note that Comixology Unlimited is only available in the US.
A Comixology tip you can use: Prices of comic books may differ between Amazon and Comixology as the former offers discounts in order to attract Comixology Unlimited signups.
Amazon knows that not everyone has the time to read. But anyone can take a “listening break”. This is where Audible comes in with its range of audiobook titles. Audible is also a part of Kindle so that you can read on the couch and start listening from the exact point when you decide to take a walk. Amazon calls it Whispersync.
Audible also has audio versions of newspapers and magazines as well as radio programs. Check out these Audible tips to get the most out of your subscription.
An Audible tip you can use: The Great Listen Guarantee allows you to return an audiobook for another title up to one year after a purchase!
Zappos is one of those companies that took a very personal experience and disrupted it. The online shoe store grabbed popularity for its top-notch customer service and its fantastic 365-day return policy.
Amazon coughed up $1.2 billion to purchase the company. And kept its wacky work culture intact which still makes it one of the most fun places to work.
Zappos is about customer delight. Amazon is about warehouse to doorstep delivery anywhere in the world. As a shoe lover, you get to enjoy the best of both worlds as Zappos plans to expand worldwide.
A Zappos tip you can use: Zappos has a dedicated online shop for sneakers called The_ONES.
You may not think Amazon has much to do with high fashion for women, but it has that niche covered with Shopbop. It started its life in 1999 as a brick-and-mortar fashion store for women in Wisconsin and was an early adopter of online shopping. Until Amazon bought it.
Shopbop has gone through a visual makeover even as it drives Amazon Fashion. If you are into Salvatore Ferragamo’s and Donna Karan, then ShopBop is a bona fide destination. Log in with your Amazon account. All purchases on Shopbop are eligible for Amazon Prime’s free two-day shipping.
A Shopbop tip you can use: Want inspiration? Check out Shopbop’s Instagram feed for some online window shopping.
Twitch is the live video-game streaming platform that is owned by Amazon. The “YouTube for video games” has had a big impact on video game culture. And it has helped Amazon connect with the teen demographic. Access to Twitch (Twitch Prime) is free with Amazon Prime membership, so that nearly makes Amazon Prime a complete entertainment package.
Twitch Prime is included with Amazon Prime in the US, Mexico, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Spain, Japan, Singapore, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Twitch Prime is included with Prime Video in over 200 other countries and territories.
A Twitch tip you can use: Did you know that the NBA G League is on Twitch? And you can even co-stream any game on your own channel!
Self-publishing is mainstream now. CreateSpace gives you the complete toolset to help you self-publish anything. You can distribute your books and video downloads on-demand on Amazon.com and other channels. Creativity is yours. The audience is Amazon’s.
Thanks to the free publishing tools on CreateSpace, you just need to start with an idea. It’s a profitable place to channel all your side-hustle ideas if you are a writer, musician or a filmmaker.
Just look into the differences between CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing. Here’s what Amazon has to say about the differences between the two platforms.
A CreateSpace tip you can use: The CreateSpace forum has several communities which are valuable writing and marketing tips.
The list of Amazon subsidiaries can continue to scroll like the Star Wars credits. The mind boggles at all of the companies and amazing technologies spawned by Amazon.
Other notable Amazon-owned brands include Alexa.com, DPReview, Box Office Mojo, Double Helix Games, Brilliance Audio, Shelfari, and even a subsidiary called Beijing Century Joyo Courier Services. Are there any other notable ones we missed?
How sure are you that the person you’re passionately “debating” with online is a real, breathing person? How do you know whether they’re just another impassioned supporter of whatever topic and not someone with government (or other) backing?
Spotting Russian bots or paid-for shills is no easy task. It is, however, becoming increasingly important as accusations of nation-states meddling in other’s affairs continue to swirl. Can you spot them? Here’s what you need to know.
Let’s start by differentiating bots and shills.
Bot: A bot is a fake social media account under the control of an organization or government seeking to influence the online community. For instance, a Twitter bot set to retweet certain hashtags and phrases in such volumes that it amplifies the specific topic. Another example is Reddit bots downvoting views disagreeing with the bot controller opinion (while upvoting those that do agree). Bots require volume for success on certain platforms, while at other times only a few can begin to shape the direction of a conversation.
Shill: A shill is different. Shills are real people actively engaging in the shaping of online (in this instance) discussion and opinion—while receiving payment in exchange for their presence. Shills promote companies, governments, public figures, and much more, for personal profit, essentially engaging in propaganda.
Depending on the organization or government, shills can work in conjunction with large bot networks to create intense vocal online movements. And while the combined efforts of shills and bots shape online opinion, these efforts are increasingly affecting more than just social media users.
The practice is also known as astroturfing, whereby organizations and governments curate the conversation through “regular” members of the public.
Russian bots and shills dominated talk in the run up to the 2016 US presidential election. Commentators and critics dedicated a huge amount of airtime and column inches discussing the role of Russian-backed bots and shills in influencing the discussion around certain topics.
In fact, Robert Mueller, the special counsel who’s investigating interference in the presidential election, recently indicted 13 US-based Russians as part of the suspected Russian-backed propaganda machine, Internet Research Agency (IRA).
Now that Twitter has completed its bot purge I can come out of hiding ??? pic.twitter.com/Utl1nCNgtF
— Russian Bot (@RussianBot007RU) February 24, 2018
The allegations of influence are far-reaching. They range from simply creating American sounding identities online, to stealing the identities of US citizens, to baiting minority activists and so-called “social justice warriors,” to creating Instagram groups such as “Woke Blacks” to influence minority voting efforts. And there are numerous other examples, too.
Social media networks are one the primary tools of influence. The platforms know there is a problem, too. In January 2018, Twitter said it was emailing 677,775 people in the US who tweeted IRA content. At the same time as the apology, Twitter is purging bot accounts, prompting the #twitterlockout hashtag to trend amongst predominantly conservative-leaning Twitter users.
And for all the cries of foul play and unfair targeting, there is evidence that “conservatives retweeted Russian trolls about 31 times more often than liberals and produced 36x more Tweets.”
Furthermore, Twitter maintains their bot purge is “apolitical” and that they enforce sitewide rules “without political bias.”
So Twitter deletes Russian Bot accounts trolling as GOP activists and what pops up in their place? "Progressive" Russian Bot accounts to troll Dems to divide our party like they did the Republicans. Look alive, people.
— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) February 25, 2018
That’s not to say bots, shills, and astroturfing is the sole remit of conservative figures.
As far back as 2007, campaign staffers for Clinton were anonymously boosting pro-Hilary sites, while during the 2016 presidential debates, the Clinton campaign was the subject of hundreds of thousands of automated bot tweets (though significantly fewer than Donald Trump).
Twitter and other social media platforms aren’t plagued by bots, as some publications would have you believe. We can break down Twitter bot hashtag interaction to understand how their backers seek to influence conversation.
The Computational Propaganda Project (CCP), sponsored by Oxford University, closely examines these interactions. The table below illustrates [PDF] the difference in automation between interactions with pro-Trump or pro-Hilary hashtags, as well as the overall percentage of non-automated tweets, between November 1 and November 9, 2016:
CCP define high automation as “accounts that post at least 50 times a day” using at least one of the election specific hashtags. The study considers anything below that threshold low automation—in other words, a real person. The table shows a much higher percentage of low level automation, indicating much higher numbers of regular users are interacting.
The study does note that some human users are inevitably swept into the high automation bracket. It also notes that accounts demonstrating high automation also very rarely use terms from the Mixed Hashtag Cluster bracket (bar Trump-Clinton combinations due to sheer retweet volume).
We will never truly know the full picture of how many bots are working on any given social media platform. Recent research estimates [PDF] that automated bots make up nearly 15 percent of all Twitter users, putting the total well over 40 million individual bot accounts.
A prime example of direct Russian influence is the 2016 Houston Da’wah Center protest.
Facebook group “Heart of Texas” posted an advert looking for sympathizers to attend a protest “to stop the Islamification of Texas.” The protest was set for midday on May 21, meeting at the Da’wah Center. At the same time, another group—the so-called “United Muslims of America”—were organizing a counter-protest at the same time and place.
The two groups met at the center and, predictably, “interactions between the two groups eventually escalated into confrontation and verbal attacks.”
At the time, neither set of protesters realized their respective group wasn’t real. That is to say; the groups were the construct of a Russian-backed “troll farm” that exists solely to manipulate political, racial, and religious tension in the US.
Recognizing bots and shills on social media isn’t always easy. Why? Because otherwise more people would realize what was going on.
Don’t get me wrong; we all interact with bots and shills, it is the very nature of social media in 2018. Operatives receive thousands of dollars a month to subtly (and sometimes more brazenly) influence conversation.
There are, however, some bot-spotting tips to bear in mind:
Other things to look out for are automatic systemic downvotes on sites like Reddit. Bots pick up on the title of a submission and immediately begin downvoting comments that disagree with their programming. (Downvoting hides comments as well as their responses from other users, and is an easy way of obstructing dissenting views.)
Spotting paid-shills is more difficult as the onus is on the account maintaining the appearance of a regular social media user. Posts promoting a certain topic or shaping the online conversation might come among regular mundane discussion points to not create suspicion.
Some common tactics include:
Another spotting tactic is the human cycle. Regular people have to sleep, eat, drink, and so on. If a single account is managing to post on a single agenda continuously for 24-hour periods, something is likely afoot.
But “really good” shills work hard. Instead of merely attacking and contradicting opinion and attempting to shape the discussion, they’ll slowly befriend and infiltrate a group before setting to work.
Unfortunately, other than reporting suspicious accounts, there is little direct action to take against shill or bot accounts. As they say, don’t feed the trolls.
The 2018 mid-term elections are firmly on the horizon now (check the political bias of any site in the run up). While the impact of shill and bot accounts is perhaps larger than ever, you now know more about how to spot certain types of behavior.
Image Credit: raptorcaptor/Depositphotos
Harman and Samsung have entered into a strategic association that will have Harman taking up the SmartThings’ standard and carrying it forward against other Internet of Things products. Announced today, Samsung SmartThings R&D team and HARMAN Connected Services (HCS), a division of HARMAN International, will collaborate on the platform with HCS developing and supporting the… Read More
The United Nations has warned that Facebook’s platform is contributing to the spread of hate speech and ethnic violence in crisis hit Myanmar. Read More
The flying car company led by Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun and backed by Google co-founder Larry Page is breaking cover with a new deal that will see it test its autonomous electric air taxis with the New Zealand government, with the aim of having a commercial network ready to carry passengers within as little as three years, the New York Times reports. Kitty Hawk, which has so far only… Read More
If you have a newer model MacBook, you can easily unlock your computer using Touch ID. Older models can’t necessarily add Touch ID to their machines, but a free iOS and Mac app can give you a pretty decent workaround. With Near Lock, not only can you use Touch ID on your phone to unlock your Mac computer, you can also have it automatically lock your computer as you walk away from your screen. How to Unlock Your Mac Using Your iPhone Download the Mac app to your computer and the iOS app to your phone. Open the iOS app...
Read the full article: How to Unlock Your Mac Using Your iPhone
Google Drive gives a generous 15GB of free storage. It sounds a lot but let’s remember that this space is shared by your files on Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. So, when you run out of space on one of your Drive accounts, you can transfer files to another. Most of us have more than one Google Drive account, but Google hasn’t yet given us an easy way to transfer files from one Google Drive to another seamlessly. You have to rely on a workaround to move files from account to another. How to Transfer Files Between Google Drive Accounts If you...
Read the full article: How to Transfer Files Between Google Drive Accounts
Scrolling through Twitter involves processing a lot of information. Every new tweet has the potential to draw your attention to a new thread, photo, video, or web link. Thus, it’s tough to keep track of everything you want to look at. That’s why Twitter has implemented a new feature that lets you bookmark any tweet. It doesn’t require any third-party services, and you can easily keep track of them. Here’s how it works. How to Bookmark Tweets So You Never Lose Them You must use the official Twitter app for Android or iOS. Update to the latest version from Google...
Read the full article: How to Bookmark Tweets So You Never Lose Them
Ever get that feeling that it’s time for a change? Around this time of year, we’re all busy trying to reinvigorate ourselves by forming powerful new habits. While you’re in the mood, perhaps it’s also time to take a duster to your online presence, and namely your Snapchat username. Except, you can’t. That’s right folks: Snapchat doesn’t let you change your username for “security reasons.” We’re not sure that argument holds water. Even Facebook lets you change your name and vanity URL. Snapchat offers two solutions. Let’s take a closer look. Method 1: Make a New Snapchat Account Oddly, the...
Read the full article: How to Change Your Snapchat Username
After getting delayed by at least a month or so following a regulatory investigation just days before the meeting was scheduled to take place, Qualcomm’s timetable to hold the meeting is now bumped up to ten days from now — and possibly before Broadcom may complete its move to the U.S. The new change is coming as part of a presidential order by the Trump administration to block… Read More
Out in the desolate wastes of deepest Iceland, magic blooms. The Icelandic sagas tell of fairy houses to magical rings that control the world and now one of those, the Wave, has landed on the Internet. The Wave is a ring that controls sound. It is essentially a wearable MIDI controller which lets you play and modify sounds as its made, allowing you to play music in thin air. It’s a… Read More
Your smartphone can do a whole lot—but not if the battery’s exhausted. Unfortunately, as your phone gets older, it might take longer to charge. Let’s talk about how mobile device charging works and the different charging methods available for current-generation phones. We’ll also see why older phones might require more time to charge and what you can do about it. Understanding Rechargeable Batteries Every mobile phone has a battery. For the most part, each battery delivers power the same way. A cell battery contains two electrodes (one positive and one negative) and an electrolyte. Through usage, ions form in the...
Read the full article: This Is Why Your Phone Is Charging So Slowly!
A single-board computer (SBC) is an entire computer built onto a circuit board. SBCs come complete with memory, a microprocessor, inputs, and outputs. Although the Raspberry Pi ranks among the most popular, and versatile, single-board PCs, it’s far from the only option. Most SBCs run Linux operating systems well. However, some single-board computers offer Android and Chrome OS compatibility. Check out the best single-board computers for installing Chrome OS and Android! Why Buy a Single-Board Computer? A single-board computer typically comes at a lower cost than purchasing a larger motherboard. Partially, this comes from the bundled components. It’s a computer...
Read the full article: The Best Single-Board Computers for Chrome OS and Android
While some people think Alexa is stupid, most of us realize Amazon’s artificial intelligence is extremely capable. After all, Alexa can help you play music on your Echo, control your smart devices, dole out medical advice, and even order takeout. The only problem with Alexa is the need to say “Alexa” every time you want her to do something. Which can be a drag if you want to issue multiple requests. However, Amazon is endeavoring to make this a thing of the past with a new feature called Follow-Up mode. Alexa Gains a New Follow-Up Mode Follow-Up mode, as first...
Read the full article: You Can Now Let Alexa Listen for Longer
With TV programming now spread out across a variety of services beyond traditional network TV, it can be hard to know what to watch next and what’s popular, given how much great content there is to choose from. An app called TV Time is helping with that, by allowing TV fans to track shows they’re watching, discover new programs, and socialize with fellow fans following each episode. Read More
