Good Monday morning. It’s October 5th. Today is the 26th anniversary of the first World Teacher Day. Here is a PDF agenda with clickable links for the free online activities occuring all week.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,185 words — about a 4 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. The Russian hackers responsible for a major 2016 election disinformation campaign are now targeting conservative social media users while posing as a media outlet, according to Reuters.

b. Thousands of Tribune Publishing employees are angry after the company sent an email that said they would receive a $10,000 bonus for their hard work after they clicked a link. The link was a test to see if they would fall for a phishing attempt that had misspellings and other clues. Employees at the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, and other newspapers are livid and many noted online that the company has endured recent layoffs. Read more at The Washington Post.

c. “Alexa, join our conversation,” is a new command Amazon has introduced to reduce the number of times you have to use the activation word. Apple and Google have also already introduced their 2020 holiday product lines. CNET has coverage.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
COVID Tracking Project
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations
COVID-19 Forecast Hub
Google County Level Mobility Reports
Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News
DFW Airport to Install Ultraviolet Technology — NBC Dallas
Facebook pulls Trump ads tying refugees to COVID — The Hill
Govs. Cuomo and Murphy Launch Exposure Apps — New York
Rural Schools Struggle With Distanced Learning — NPR
Website offers place to grieve COVID-19 victims — Boston 25 News

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Google confirmed Thursday that two separate indexing issues affected its database beginning September 20. One dealt with mobile-indexing and the other with different versions of the same content. We saw one website of a couple dozen we monitor have issues that pretty neatly fit this timeline.

In other words, these little mishaps you read about almost never impact your sites, but with a couple of billion pages potentially affected, it’s bound to happen sooner or later, even if many of those pages are PTA Meeting Minutes from 2014.

Changing a website’s layout can also affect rankings even if the page’s content and URLs remain the same, said Google’s John Mueller in his weekly live chat. Any changes might be positive because the new layout provides better context to the content or negative because something isn’t properly configured. Don’t forget that Google now uses page speed and factors such as how a page updates as it loads to rank that page.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Ransomware Attacks

Ransomware attacks had already hit Baltimore and Atlanta when we wrote about it last year. Small cities and organizations were also falling prey to what we called an insidious problem.

Ransomware attacks occur when hackers are able to take control of a computer system. To regain control, organizations will often pay what were once minor ransoms of several tens of thousands of dollars. Those payments can now reach several million dollars. One of the most famous ransomware attacks took place against Sony Pictures in late 2014 when salacious and embarrassing details from private emails and files were leaked by hackers believed to be sponsored by the North Korean government.

The Trump administration warned financial institutions last week that paying those ransoms may violate federal regulations related to money laundering and economic sanctions. Financial institutions are required to notify authorities if they have reason to believe that a transaction exceeding five thousand dollars is related to illegal activity.

The FBI had previously urged organizations to report all ransomware attacks while acknowledging that some entities chose to pay the ransom in order to immediately secure their data.

A ransomware attack on eResearchTechnology reported this weekend by The New York Times has slowed the clinical trials for a COVID-19 virus among others because the company sells software used in those trials. 

Researchers also learned last week that personal information about Las Vegas area students including their birth dates and grades were published online after the Clark County School District refused to pay a ransomware demand in September. Nearly 600 school districts have been attacked. Data was published online in five instances just last month.

If you run an organization, you need a computer security plan and the appropriate insurance. This problem isn’t going away soon and may now be more complicated than ever if organizations can’t simply pay after a ransomware attack.

Smartlinks
Clinical Trials Hit by Ransomware Attack — The New York Times
Ransomware Victims Could Face Steep Fines — Krebs on Security
Sony Hackers Were Causing Mayhem Years Before — Wired
Students’ Personal Data Leaked, Post-Attack — Threatpost
U. S. Warns Insurers Against Paying Ransomware — Insurance Journal

5. Following Up: Apple vs. Epic

We’ve told you about Epic Games taking on Apple over its commission requirement that 30% of all revenues generated by apps are paid to Apple (or Google for Android apps). Now there’s news that Spotify, Epic, and Match Group have formed a coalition to fight those charges.

Read about the Coalition for App Fairness.

6. Debugging: Share Verified

“This is a time for science and solidarity,” says UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a video appearing on the UN’s Share Verified website. Go there now to sign up for daily or weekly briefings with nonpartisan information about the pandemic.

Most of the world won’t allow U.S. visitors. Let’s join them in beating back the pandemic.

Sign up here

7. ProTip: Amazon Prime Credits

Next week will feature the collision of Amazon Prime Days with Walmart’s new “Big Save Event” and Target’s “Deal Days” so plan on spending quality time seeing advertisements between now and then. Meanwhile the friendly folks at Tom’s Guide have a list of Amazon Prime Day credits you can qualify for before the shopping mayhem begins.

Credits, not coupons

8. Spotlighters Ask: Are Refurbished PCs Good?

Don’t forget to send us your Spotlighters Ask questions. We answer them all via email and post one each week. 

Yes, they’re sometimes a great deal. Major manufacturers and retailers refurbish devices and sell them at substantial savings. Any of those brand-name companies is a reputable source to buy from. Likewise a local shop with a good reputation may provide even better pricing or stay on the lookout for specific device types.

This Wirecutter buying guide for used PCs is excellent.

9. Screening Room: Nike Meets eSports

10. Coffee Break: Threes

The best online games and time wasters are easy to learn and play in a few minutes. Or you might play a bunch of rounds during the slow part of movie. It could happen. What an addictive game.

Here’s the web version. There are also mobile versions. 

Good Monday morning. It’s September 28th. Yom Kippur began last night at sundown and ends today at sundown.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,280 words — about a 4 1/2 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. A picture cropping algorithm used by Twitter and Zoom may be removing the faces of black people. aaSimilar racial bias has been detected for years in algorithms used by other large companies including IBM, Amazon, and Facebook. (NBC News)

b. Amazon Sidewalk’s reintroduction last week may have found the right time for its close-up. The company plans to use its Echo and Ring devices to extend the distance of a network signal to an area surrounding your home so that your smart home devices work outside.

“It’s great to get an alert your dog left the yard, but those devices could also send data to Amazon like the frequency, duration, destination and path of your dog walk,” says Forester analyst Jeff Pollard. (CNET)

c. Password manager 1Password rolled out a new function to create a single use virtual credit card for online purchases. This video shows how it works.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
COVID Tracking Project
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations
COVID-19 Forecast Hub
Google County Level Mobility Reports
Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News
How to Track COVID-19 Trends on Google Maps — Lifehacker
Instagram’s Founders Explain Their Covid-Charting Obsession — Wired
Mayo launches nationwide COVID-19 predictions — Duluth News Tribune
What if All COVID-19 Deaths Happened in Your Neighborhood — Wash. Post

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Search engines often rely on a hidden sentence or two to help them understand a web page’s content. Called the meta description, you’re used to seeing it repurposed as the descriptive portion of a search engine snippet. Writing excellent descriptions that meet search engine needs and that generate clicks from searchers is an art. 

Now the smart folks at the Portent agency have released a study called “How Often Google Ignores Our Meta Descriptions” and the answer is about 70% of the time. The data is relatively consistent among devices, but shows an interesting uptick when a page’s snippet is displayed at the fourth result or lower.

Unlike many things, search is a zero-sum game that has at most only one winner per search. But we all need to understand that Google’s algorithms are rewriting the meta description to challenge the top three results. When we explain to business people that search engine optimization isn’t static, this is the kind of behavior that we mean. Not only are the people involved with websites targeting the top results, but Google will use lower ranked sites as a stalking horse to continue to push click through rates higher.

That’s not a bad thing for searchers or for Google because higher click rates mean higher satisfaction if all other things are equal. But if it’s your marketing budget, you need to understand that you’ll need ongoing SEO efforts to remain competitive.

You can see the data here.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Insured Resilience

Environmentalist and philanthropist Chandran Nair wrote this week about insured resilience for the World Economic Forum. Nair warns that society must develop the ability to withstand and recover from the shocks of overexploitation, consumption-led capitalism, biodiversity losses, and climate change. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is showing us that insured resilience, not technology, is what will allow society to prioritize important issues like climate change and social equality as it resets after extreme weather, pandemic, and economic catastrophes.

Technology organizations are trying to help, but aren’t the answer as they address only symptoms and their presence is sometimes complicating. Earlier this year, Facebook inadvertently wiped out an entire language spoken by two percent of the population in Myanmar who are already in a battle over what observers believe is ethnic cleansing.

MIT Technology Review reports that only three U.S. companies crawl the entire web: Google, Microsoft, and Diffbot. The latter company provides commercial-level knowledge graphs, those boxes of information seen on the right side of search result pages. Financial issues are a significant reason for the limited number of companies, but that means that the information can be potentially limited. 

“The pandemic shows that we need to reset our priorities toward better serving the global majority with limited access to basic needs, and doing that by respecting limits,” Nair wrote Friday. 

And while many of us are blessed with technological solutions to weather part of the pandemic, the Benton Institution reported this week that the digital divide is extreme in many areas of the United States. 

One in four K-12 households in California do not have a computer and high-speed Internet connection. The same is true throughout rural and urban settings, representing tens of thousands of students in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, as well as 99% of students in one rural Alabama county, and 30% in rural Virginia.

Heeding Nair’s advice, one might ask what else those U.S. homes are lacking and how to create insured resilience.

Smartlinks

Closing the Digital Divide — Benton Institute
Facebook Accidentally Blacked Out A Language — The Verge
Know-it-All AI Reads the Web Nonstop — MIT Tech
Why Resilience is the Answer — World Economic Forum

5. Following Up: GPT-3 & Google Political Ads

We’ve written a lot about Open AI’s GPT-3 program and its ability to beat previous benchmarks. Microsoft announced last Tuesday that it has exclusively licensed GPT-3 for its own AI applications. 

“Directly aiding human creativity and ingenuity in areas like writing and composition, describing and summarizing large blocks of long-form data (including code), converting natural language to another language — the possibilities are limited only by the ideas and scenarios that we bring to the table,” said Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott in a statement.

We’ve also told you a lot about political advertising during this election cycle and the criticism leveled at Google for not banning political ads. Google will now block election ads following Election Day, Axios scooped Friday. The move will hopefully limit some of the misinformation and disinformation regarding election results that experts expect to be circulating in early November.

6. Debugging: 2020 Ballots Were Not Discarded

The Sonoma County (CA) government had to take to social media to combat a rumor spread online and amplified this weekend by President Donald Trump that ballots were thrown away. Here is their post.

7. ProTip: Virtual Backgrounds on Android Zoom

No more house background envy. Here’s how to enable virtual backgrounds on Android phones. 

Only Android and make sure your app is updated.

8. Spotlighters Ask:  More Zoom

Remember: press reply and email a question about integrating the online world into your life. We research and answer them all. We also publish one each week, but you’ll get an answer first.

Can you call in on a phone using Zoom and watch on a PC?

You can absolutely use phone audio and another device’s video.  Here are links showing you how to do that using Zoom, Webex, and Blue Jeans. 

Screening Room: Skywalker Meets Picard

10. Coffee Break: Geo Guessr

This fun web game dumps you somewhere in the world on Google Maps. Your job is to figure out where using Google Street View. Setting up a free account lets you play the timed Daily Challenge for points and try your hand at Country Streak.

One hint only: go find commercial areas and search for clues on signage.

Here are three ways that we can help you:

1. Get a free SEO audit on our website.

2.  Have a simple, fact-based question about digital marketing? Reply & ask George for free.

3. If your organization needs help with search, social media, or advertising, have a look at what we do.

Good Monday morning. It’s September 21st. Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day. Our friends at Clean Air Moms Action have a great resource for voting and volunteering this year.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,418 words — about a 5 minute read. 

1. News to Know Now

a.  Citing a lawsuit regarding First Amendment concerns, a judge has temporarily blocked an order that would have prevented new downloads of the app We Chat. Meanwhile President Trump told reporters Saturday that a business deal between TikTok owner Byte Dance, Oracle Corp., and Walmart “has his blessing” although it was not immediately clear which clause in the Constitution describes the process for an executive branch blessing by the president.

b. Political activity online continues to highlight a sharply divided electorate. This week privately held outdoor retailer Patagonia acknowledged that the tag on the company’s shorts has the phrase “Vote the Assholes Out” stitched on the reverse side. Meanwhile Twitter, often criticized for allowing President Trump to violate the company’s online standards, removed a tweet by Kanye West that provided an editor’s phone number and asked his followers to call “a white supremacist”. Facebook joined Twitter in suspending and removing accounts made by teenagers who were paid by Turning Point Action to amplify conservative political messages.

c.  California has enacted the Genetic Privacy Information Act following a similar law passed last year by Florida. The law requires consumer DNA testing companies like 23 and Me and Ancestry to receive a consumer’s permission before disclosing DNA information to third parties including insurance companies and law enforcement agencies.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Covid Tracking Project — useful for its annotations
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations — the gold standard
COVID-19 Forecast Hub — Collects multiple models
Google Mobility Reports — county level info on people locations
Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News
5 Things COVID-19 Experts Get Wrong About Stats – The Next Web
Hologram Teaching Tech Launching in Response To COVID – CBS 21 DFW
In South Korea, COVID-19 Comes With Online Bullies Risk – NY Times
Internet Search Results Predict Hotspots Weeks Later – Science Alert
Lack of Internet Access Has Become Critical For Students – MSN
Senior Living Tech Spending Skyrockets Amid COVID-19 – Senior Housing
Smart Thermometer Company Kinsa Predicts Local Surge – Springfield News

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Those domain names that seem awfully explicit and chock-full of keywords are called exact-match domains. Google says they’re unnecessary for success. Google exec John Mueller offered that guidance during a recent Ask Google Webmasters video. That’s consistent with years of Google messaging and directly contradicts some SEO software and studies that suggest otherwise. 

Google is also continuing to roll out its green checkmark to local businesses in home service categories. Those badges are earned in the Google Guaranteed and Google Screened programs. The latter program is available for attorneys, financial planners, real estate agents, and tax specialists. Search Engine Land’s Justin Sanger has nice coverage here.

Google My Business listings, a mainstay of the home services and professional industry, now offers video conferencing integration via Google Meet, Webex, Skype, and Zoom. There are details at Search Engine Roundtable.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Amazon Grocery

The quaint days when Amazon purchased Whole Foods and threatened to disrupt food retail are over. It’s done. Amazon is an important component of e-commerce infrastructure and is even labeling its own private food products across ten different brands including Wag for pets, Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime for snacks, and Mama Bear for child products. 

Last week, the company opened its first Amazon Fresh grocery store in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills neighborhood. The latest store opening incorporates elements of the company’s automated Go stores, Whole Foods’ focus on experience and quality, and the company’s Dash Carts and ubiquitous Alexa assistant.

Amazon also has a separate delivery service also called Amazon Fresh that directly competes with other online grocers such as Walmart, Target, and Peapod. Its Amazon Prime Now service still offers grocery delivery in some areas within one hour for an $8 fee or fee-free in two hours. 

Amazon’s grocery retail empire spreads through North America, Europe, and Asia. There are nearly 30 Amazon Go stores with pre-pandemic planning calling for 3,000 stores by 2021. Amazon Go is also testing a larger footprint location, this time in Redmond, Washington, home to Microsoft’s global headquarters. There are still 500 Whole Food Markets serving upscale areas. Online shoppers can also simultaneously shop at Amazon Prime and Whole Foods at the company’s separate Amazon Prime Now website and app.

The explosion into grocery from 2017’s purchase of Whole Foods mirrors Jeff Bezos’ “Get Big Fast” mantra. Now under pressure from Walmart Plus, Amazon announced last week that it will open 1,000 small delivery hubs throughout the U.S. A rumored takeover of sites housing J.C. Penney and other bankrupt department store chains appears to be on hold because they are frequently on multiple levels and would need extensive remodeling to be delivery hubs.

The company is growing big fast in yet another sector by disrupting an established industry with technology. That strategy worked more than twenty-five years ago when Bezos launched “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” and shows no signs of abating now. The video below shows how Amazon sees its blending of technology in a familiar yet different supermarket setting.

What’s next? Amazon and Walmart are racing to see who can scale up drone delivery. Both have real world testing going on, including Walmart delivering groceries via drone in Fayetteville, NC, home of Fort Bragg. 

Smartlinks

Amazon Fresh Grocery Store Opens — Retail Wire
Amazon Fresh Now Open to Everyone — Amazon.com
Amazon Opens First Cashierless Grocery Store — TechCrunch
Amazon Opens New Go Grocery in Microsoft’s Neighborhood — Geek Wire
Amazon Plans to Open 1,000 Warehouses — Bloomberg
Private Label Retailer of the Year — Grocery Dive
Walmart Now Piloting On-Demand Drone Delivery — Walmart

5. Following Up: Criminal Databases

We wrote extensively last week about the pitfalls in current law enforcement technology. Slate has an excellent followup for you to consider about racial and other disparities found in criminal databases. 

The NYPD’s gang database is 99% Black and Latinx.

6. Debugging: Spot the Troll Quiz

This is a great quiz put together from real social media content assembled at Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub. Your job is to guess whether the poster was a legitimate account or from a troll farm.

Most industry folks seem to get 5 or 6 correct.  Can you do better?

7. ProTip: How to Automate Transcription

Note taking is so old school. The nice Lifehacker folks have posted a primer on how to use Google Docs or Microsoft Word to transcribe your next meeting.

Google’s version is free to boot!

8. Spotlighters Ask:  Wikibuy

Remember: press reply and email a question about integrating the online world into your life. We research and answer them all. We also publish one each week.

Do you use Wikibuy? I was wondering if it’s legit?

I don’t use the service, but it’s legit in that it is not two Romanian guys in a warehouse somewhere who are trying to get your information. Capital One bought them a couple of years ago. There is a similar browser extension called Honey that is owned by Paypal. 

The strategy for Cap One and Paypal is to insert themselves into the ecommerce process. Services like these can save you money, but the savings may not be huge, and you may not have an account with the company offering the cheaper price. And don’t forget that you’re likely sharing your data with the service provider too.

Screening Room: Panera Meets Bolton

10. Coffee Break: Sandwich Optimization

“I set out to work on something completely meaningless,” wrote data scientist Ethan Rosenthal who created an algorithm to optimize the placement of banana slices on the PB & Banana sandwiches his grandfather introduced to him. Take a picture of your ingredients and the algo does the same for you.

He succeeded in meaningless AND optimization.