Trends

ANALYST CORNER

Will Amazon Go Reinvent Retail?

Every time I walk into a retail store, I complain. I grumble to my wife about the same pet peeve every time we go shopping. After walking the aisles and filling the basket, you then must go through the most inefficient checkout process. First you unload everything, then it's rung up, then you put th...

Burger King in essence hijacked the voice-activated Google Home speakers in some consumers' homes. In a 15-second television ad, the camera zooms in on a young man wearing the company uniform who says, "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?" The "OK Google" trigger phrase for Google's artificial in...

The Department of Labor has found "systemic compensation disparities" between Google's female employees and their male counterparts, regional director Janette Wipper said at a hearing in San Francisco. The hearing was in connection with the department's lawsuit over Google's failure to hand over det...

Although nearly every research study and industry survey suggests the Internet of Things market is growing rapidly, plenty of companies are holding back from pursuing IoT opportunities. Ironically, the possibility of a long-overdue financial downturn in the next few years could force executives to p...

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has entered more rarefied air, having leapfrogged billionaires Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the second wealthiest person in the world. Bezos -- CEO of the e-commerce retailer and cloud services provider -- last week enjoyed a jump of $1.5 billion to $75.6 bil...

ANALYST CORNER

A Solution for the Uber CEO's Anger Problem

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has earned a reputation for having a short fuse. In addition to his apparent personal anger management issues, there are the stresses that come with running a giant company -- and Uber recently has been losing executives. When it rains, it pours. What's happening with Kalani...

The United States House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the Congressional Review Act, undoing privacy restrictions imposed on Internet service providers during the Obama administration. The Senate passed the CRA last week in a 50-48 vote along party lines. The White House has expressed suppor...

TECHNOLOGY LAW CORNER

Why Are Health Records So Valuable to Cybercriminals?

Protecting the data in electronic health records did not start with the advent of HIPAA, as many people think. Protecting health records has been a critical requirement in the healthcare space since the computers became a fixture in hospitals. However, HIPAA added public reports of fines issued for ...

Eighty-three percent of U.S. broadband households, or more than 250 million consumers, own and use a smartphone. A recent beneficiary to this mass adoption has been the sharing economy phenomenon, which includes sharing apps such as Uber, Lyft and Airbnb. These business models are augmented by real-...

Privacy advocates and consumer groups are fighting back against the U.S. Senate's Thursday vote to undo privacy restrictions on Internet service providers. In a 50-48 party line vote, the Senate approved the Congressional Review Act, S.J. Res. 34. If the House of Representatives gives it the green l...

Several top U.S. advertisers -- including AT&T, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson -- this week pulled out of their agreements with YouTube due to their ads appearing with videos advocating extremism, or with other offensive content. Such placements represent violations of their agreements with G...

Information security practices are undergoing a transformation. For at least a decade, environments have been becoming less perimeter-centric: Gone are the good old days when in-line controls protected the trusted, safe interior from the "wild west" of the outside. As environments become more compl...

ANALYST CORNER

Verizon Wakes Up to Join Mobile TV Race

Following decades of slow movement due to cable companies facing no competition, the television world is changing rapidly. Lots of challengers have arisen in the pay-TV space in recent years. One of the latest comes from Verizon, which has improved its FiOS mobile app to offer data-free streaming. A...

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