The Coolness Factor Spring 2013

Vectoring is a term I have used for over a decade to identify the practice of triangulating bits of data to zero in on you and I. Companies use these scrapes of information to dredge up additional pieces of data to construct a whole target profile of their prospective victim. The culprits range from marketing spammers to criminals stealing identities and hijacking personal accounts.f
The problem is that there are way too many companies are engaged in this to put a cork in it. Ñow that the horses are out of the stable no one is stepping up to close the doors.

In-App promotions and In-App purchasing is turning out to be a cancer to the rapidly expanding App ecosystem. Marketers had to find a way to inject and insert their crap into what was becoming a wonderland of productivity. I fear that we will soon see even more invasive ways now that the horses are out of the stable and we didn’t pitch a fit. Now that they know they can do this and get away with it and in the process make piles of money the In-whatever game is on.

To put up with all the crap we have considering the overwhelming power we hold can be described as nothing but pure idiocacy.

We bend over for malware, data tracking, constant invasions of our privacy and just about every sort of scam crooks can cook up to separate us from our money and data. We could put our foot down and move Congress to enact new laws and regulations to protect us but we are too vested in pointless party politics to focus on what matters. Thus our world is littered with snares and traps to lure and fleece the public like sheep going to market.

I recently attempted to sign up for a Google+ account and one of the final questions it slyly but firmly urged me to accept stated that by OK’ing this I would be “Allowing Google to use my information to personalize conent (and ads) on non-Google web sites. By continuing I would be absolutely agreeing to Google and Google Play’s Terms of Service and Pivacy Notice. Neither of which by the way were readily displayed.

My reading of this my be different from their intent but it seemed that by consenting to this I would be allowing Google to assume my idenity to push content abd ads in my name. A potential personal disaster in the making.

The lesson is this. We must be mindful and careful what we tacitly consent to. We could be letting the horses out of the stable. Opening doors that cannot easily if ever be closed again.

Never has this been more true than in the spake and cluster of Social Media gurus and advisors pimping the latest secrets to Social Media Millions. I suspect every marketing hack released from businesses due to the downturn shed their marketing wolves clothing in favor social media sheep’s disguise to lure in the unsuspecting and desperate or criminally incompetent.

These hucksters have at their command the very tools they profess to teach with the ease of a click.

The result is that they exhaust every possible means to flood our email inboxes, bury us at in unsolicitated tweets, or toss up pop unders, splash overs and dig through lists to ntercept our personal profiles in efforts to lead us to the promotional slaughter.

I rectently went online to find competitive pricing on a new Nexus 7 for sale and discovered that almost everyone that had stock had it at the same price $249. This could be coincuidence but I suspect the price was set and agreements made to regulate the price and stock.

I don’t know if, how, when or who accomplished it. I also strongly suspect this will be or is the prevailing trend with other highly successful devices now and into the foreseeable future. On the other pole we have super inflated  carrier pricing built into long term contacts representing supposed subsidies.We face a damn if you do, damn if you don’t scenario. We can’t live without our gizmos and gadgets so because people are anxious to get their hands on the latest greatest we are ready to go for anything. At some point this might change or at least hopefully be challenged.

Back in 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a much looser standard for price fixing, ruling that manufacturers may sometimes set minimum prices for products without violating antitrust statutes. It seemed to be a good thing, for manufacturers. But has turned out to be bad for consumers. by easing the nearly century-old ban on retail price floors, leaving it to lower courts to determine whether individual circumstances violate anti-trust laws.

The emerging drastic lack of competitive retail stores like CompUSA, Circuit City, the situation leads to a truncated a environment for conscienced consumers and one that is easier to manage for manufacturers looking at the bottom line and better profit margins. Strangely,  we are already paying much more for phones than we did for whole computer systems not so very long ago.

Our online options are no better online. Online sales have become quietly subserviant to suppliers who often turn out to be sources like Amazon and there again we run into the “streamlined” pricing issues. It will be more than interesting to me when and if this story steps up to the level of National interest and notice. For now, “it is what it is, and we must deal with it”

One thing that is overlooked in our rush into an app-driven world. Tthe life span and longevity of apps we purchase and grow fond of using.

It has been my frequent experience that usually over time and probably  because the developer is not making a killing if anything at all, they eventually move on to newer projects. What happs? Our app runs its couse and at some point because of OS upgrades it ceases to function or be upgraded.

This is a real problem that gets worse by the day. Multiple apps take up space on our systems and grow old and obsolete and become the cause of countless performance problems that sometimes lead to critical system crashes and more serious complications in addition to opening up gaping security holes.

So, here we are: no support, no app, no remedy and no recourse.

This is a problem not even being discussed. We are left simply to bend over and take it.

Maybe a protest movement might help or a boycott might stimule change. If anyone out there wants to take up this cause, count me in!

The new frontier for scammers has been uncovered!

Healthcare especially the alternative variety has quickly become the territory of conmen and crooks that don’t care how much damage they inflict on others even the sick and feeble. They have figured out ways to lure in unsuspecting victims into wild schemes and useless remedies for every type of malady known to man or beast.

It may have found its zenieth most recently when magnets were pushed as be all- cure alls promising miracle healing properties that seemed to far fetched to believe. But believe them we did and we snatched up braclets, insoles, and clothing embedded with magnets aplenty.

Now technology may indeed have the potential to help us get and stay healthy. Healt aids were even a hot topic at CES 2013.

We should tread very carefully into technology for healh. The potential for dssaster is enormous and the effects could cause harm. Planting false hope in bogus cures and bullshit remedies is the new Digital Snake Oil. The practioneers don’t ride around in covered wagons. Folks that reach so low are doomed to the circles of Hell. They reach out online targeting the weak, desparate and challenged. These slime masters infest our social networks overload our email accounts with spam and place misleading info on sites trying to help. There is no longer form of life

I just visited a store I have shopped at for te past 10 years and quickly noticed all the new packaging in addition to higher prices. The real surprising element was that this was for almost every product across all sorts of categories. The packaging was slicker and the labeling more misleading and deceptive.

It seems no mere accident or coincidence. If this is just a trend who set it? If it is just a strategy who declared it? Mainly, how did most manufacturers move to this agenda at the same time?

Consumers, In 2013 buy wisely, be selective!

Everyday you read about common users being scammed, hacked and sometimes robbed of their hard-earned cherished devices.
We sometimes develop a “It’ll never happen to me” mentality, and then BOOM, its your turn. The following are a few hints and reminders to help keep you safe and secure. No level of diligence is unnecessary. Take the to do whatever you possibly can to protect yourself from the many scams, snares and traps that are out there waiting for you. Hopefully one day all of this won’t be necessary.

• Safety First!
• Watch your own back (online and offl)
• Be careful what you do and what you post about yourself
• Never submit too much personal info or to many pictures
• Use extreme care and caution before downloading anything
• Free isn’t always free there is always a cost or price to pay
• Trust no one without exercising reasonable diligence
• Keep your disks and systems clean, secure and protected
• Keep a secure journal of all your passwords, serials and logins

I thought that corporate retail’s self-declared November 26th Black Friday cyber sale day was an idea gone completely mad had gotten just about as bad as it could possibly get, that was up until I opened up my general email this morning only to be totally bombared by hordes of unsolicited product sale promotions from just about every tech-related company in the business with something to sell and that was able to buy up an email list. to spam.

Even non-tech companies tried to get in on it. What does Tandy Leather have to with cyber anything?

Cyber Monday is a perfect example of exactly what uncontrolled and unmonitored Social Media regulation has in store for us consumers in our near and rapidly approaching future.

Many of these so-called “social” services we innocently sign up for will eventually come back to haunt us in intrusive ways we cannot at this moment even imagine. Once agile overly-aggressive companies link up, vector and cross reference all of the information at their disposal we should be aware of and prepare for the B.S. to come.

Greedy marketers will dig in to mine and harvest all that available info and proceed to push designs and schemes of every type and sort using our personal info to target us based on our previously posted and expressed interests, location specifics, past purchases and more

THIS IS MADDNESS!

WELCOME TO CYBER WORLD 2013

You’d be surprised that most mean the opposite of what we think they mean. They claim one thing and in confusing legal gobbily gook turn around and deny or reverse that. What is the point of a contact that says that the company can change or discontinue that contact at any time?

They spell out your obligations but at the same time refute their own. We are caught in a Bizarro World of obligations and regulations that folks with years of legal training and experience cannot decipher nor understand. So how are we to make sense of any of it? The truth is that we aren’t! We are meant to get so frustrated that we just give up, throw up our hands and let come what may.

It is only when we seek to appeal to higher powers that we begin to truly sense exactly what we have set ourselves up for and how we are bound to get hoodwinked and bamboozled.

So, here we go pitting invasive tracking technology against personal freedom with truancy serving as the reason or excuse.

Students in the Northside Independent School District in Texas are being forced to Wear a School-Issued RFID Tracker posing as Student body ID cards with RFID-embedded chips:

UPDATE: A local Texas judge has tentatively blocked the suspension, pending further hearings.

A Texas high school student was to be suspended for refusing to wear the student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip.

Background: Northside Independent School District in San Antonio began issuing the RFID-chip-laden student-body cards when the semester began in the fall. The ID badge has a bar code associated with a student’s Social Security number, and the RFID chip monitors pupils’ movements on campus, from when they arrive until when they leave.

Radio-frequency identification devices have become a daily part of the electronic age — found primarily in passports, library and payment cards. Eventually they’re expected to replace bar-code labels on consumer goods. Now many schools across the nation are adopting them as well.

Sophomore Andrea Hernandez, The suspended student was notified by the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio that she would not be able to continue attending John Jay High School unless she wears the RFID badge around her neck, which she has flat-out refused to do.

The district said the girl, who objects on privacy and religious grounds, would have to attend another high school in the district that does not yet employ the RFID tags.

The Rutherford Institute said it would go to court and try to nullify the district’s decision. The institute said that the district’s stated purpose for the program — to enhance their coffers — is “fundamentally disturbing.

Many believe that there is something disturbing about this school district’s insistence on steamrolling students into complying with programs that have nothing whatsoever to do with academic priorities and everything to do with fattening school budgets,”

Like most state-financed schools, the district’s budget is tied to average daily attendance. If a student is not in his seat during morning roll call, the district doesn’t receive daily funding for that pupil because the school has no way of knowing for sure if the student is there.But with the RFID tracking, students not at their desk but tracked on campus are counted as being in school that day, and the district receives its daily allotment for that student.Tagging school children with RFID chips is uncommon, but not new.

Locally, A federally funded preschool in Richmond, California, began embedding RFID chips in students’ clothing in 2010. And an elementary school outside of Sacramento, California, scrubbed a plan in 2005 amid a parental uproar.

A Houston, Texas, school district began using the chips to monitor students on 13 campuses in 2004 for the same reasons the Northside Independent School District implemented the program. Northside is mulling adopting the program for its other 110 schools.The Hernandez family, which is Christian, told InfoWars that the sophomore is declining to wear the badge because it signifies Satan, or the Mark of the Beast warning in Revelations 13: 16-18.

The district, in a letter last week to the family, said it would allow her to continue attending the magnet school with “the battery and chip removed.” Tthe girl’s father, Steve Hernandez, said the district told him that the offer came on the condition that he must “agree to stop criticizing the program and publicly support it,” a proposition the father told WND Education that he could not stomach.The district was not immediately available to comment.

In school districts such as here in Oakland,CA where attendence and truenvy are accute issues this may be an option that needs to be examined and carefully considered.

ARE THEY REALLY SOLD OUT? HECK NO!!!

This is usually a psychological strategy to drum up sales and heighten demad to the point of panic. ” I must be a bad parent if I’m not able to get Little Jane and Johnny those things they really wanted!”

It can be implemented in leiu of weak or inefficient marketing efforts or in response to a products anticipated popularity. It works by letting new and pending orders pile up, delivery times lapse and by posting “out-of-stock” notices everywhere and drumming up long ques in retail stores companies are able to create heightened anticipation and a sense of panicked excitement around their stables of new products.

Vehicles for creating artificial demand:

• Spam mail
• Television messages
• Rumors
• Press Releases and Announcements
• Blog post scuttlebutt

This strategy can include many individual twists and unique modificationsbut in general it goes well back beyond the days of “Sold Out Beanie Babies” and other trendy highly sought but unavailable items usually around the gift giving holidays.

Then suddenly when it looks like the public is flat-out disgusted agitated and frustrated a windfall of new stock shows up and whatever the causes of the delays were seem to disapear. Once the pipeline is refreshed the hype is reapplied. This slimy patern is repeated for almost each and every popular trendy product that is assumed to be very highly sought and just as much in demand.

It usually is nothing more than fake scarcity.

A major heme in the movie Zombiemania is coming true and the clock on Hostess Twinkies (at least by that brandname) is running out.

Hostess Brands– the maker of iconic Twinkies, delicious cupcakes and body building Wonder Bread  is asking a federal bankruptcy court for permission to close operations and liquidate all assets.

The reason given: A strike by bakers protesting a new contract. According to CEO Gregory Rayburn, “We deeply regret the necessity of today’s decision, but we do not have the financial resources to weather an extended nationwide strike,” said  in a statement. The industry claims “overcapacity” all around.

The company is controlled by a group of investment firms, including hedge funds Silver Point Capital and Monarch Alternative Capital.

What results will be well over 18,500 workers losing jobs and the company shutting doors of 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers nationwide, as well as the demise of 570 outlet stores.

Hostess will sell assets to the highest bidders in a move that may mean a bit of extended life for some of its most popular products to be scooped up at auction and possibly grafted to products from other companies. Products already in stores will be sold, and the outlet stores will remain open for several days to sell products they already have. Hostess had yearly sales of over $2.5 billion including over 500 million Twinkies made and sold annually.

Hello Little Debbie

I use to live across the street from a Hostess plant in San Francisco and when it closed decades back felt that an important piece of my youth was ending but I could still find Twinkies for sale as could a cetain S.F. policeman/councilman. Well now the other shoe is falling as the final chapter of the company is drawing to a close.

I will no longer be able to blame Hostess for the extra creme-filled pounds I have carried since my teen post sports years. And defendants can no longer use Twinkie as the reason for dimished capacity.

Goodbye to an icon