1. Good Monday Morning

It’s February 1st. An order requiring the wearing of face masks by mass transit users goes into effect at midnight. Passengers traveling via bus, train, taxi, or plane could be charged criminal penalties if they refuse.

Today’s Spotlight is 904 words — about a 4 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

a) Facebook’s Oversight Board overturned four of the first five cases it considered. These cases concerned Uyghur Muslims in China, breast cancer images in context, an erroneous quote attributed to Joseph Goebbels, and misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. (Board announcement)

b) The Oversight Board is also seeking public comment as it considers the company’s suspension of former president Donald Trump’s account, after he encouraged terrorists to gather in Washington and attack the U.S. Capitol. Click through to leave your comments. 

c) Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft all reported strong quarterly financials. Apple climbed closer to $200 billion in cash on hand and reached $100 billion in quarterly revenues for the first time. Amazon and Alphabet report after tomorrow’s bell.

3. COVID-19 Tech News

Great Trackers

Overview — Johns Hopkins
Community Mobility — Google
Vaccine Distribution — Washington Post
Risk Calculator — Brown

NEW: New York Times tracker that allows you to customize a daily email with multiple places that you’re monitoring: Click here for more.

Coronavirus & Tech News

Amazon Algos Can Reinforce Vax Misinfo — Seattle Times
Anti-Vaxxers Mounting Internet Campaigns — US News & World Report
COVID Apps Get Second Chance Under Biden — MIT Technology Review
Facebook Still Making Money From Anti-Vax Sites — The Guardian
How We’re Helping Vaccination Efforts — Google

4. Search Engine News

Google will now allow websites to use rich data to announce that they have a product on sale. The effort is through the internet standard Schema.org and its “Offer” code. You’ve seen the rich results created by Schema when you see star ratings or images within a search engine listing. 

Google also said that embedding a video from another site instead of hosting it on your own site creates no SEO penalty. 

Yes, but you should always store a local copy of videos pertaining to your organization or brand. You are dependent on YouTube or another platform when you rely on a video uploaded elsewhere. You should absolutely embed videos from YouTube to speed up your site, but you should also monitor your pages to make sure the videos are working.

5. In The Spotlight — Apple & Facebook Continue Advertising Cookies War

This is a big deal coming down the pike, and we need to be specific about our vocabulary:

Advertising cookies help a website remember personal information like your password or items that are in your shopping cart.

Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is similar to cookies, but it is Apple’s way of identifying users. It’s a very long and unique number assigned only to Apple iOS devices.Apple introduced IDFA about five years ago, allowing Apple device owners to completely opt out, which about twenty percent do. Apple recently announced it would make advertising opt-in rather than opt-out. It’s a big deal since you can imagine consumers not flocking to activate a feature that makes online tracking easier.

Facebook warned advertisers during the winter holidays, saying targeting users would be more difficult and result in lower conversion rates. Apple countered by announcing IDFA would be made opt-in during “early spring.” Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke about the issue during a privacy conference last week. Cook did not mention Facebook directly, but criticized companies that exploit users’ data, mislead users, and promote extremist content to them. The speech was important, albeit easy for a non-advertising executive to make.

Now Google, still using advertising cookies and Apple’s IDFA, says it has invented a way to organize users into cohorts with similar interests. The company announced last week that its FLoC system is superior to cookie-based tracking because it also protects individuals’ privacy.

Advertising cookies won’t go away, but they may be replaced by other technical solutions. The online advertising industry is worth more than $300 billion in the United States each year, and that buys lots of innovation and influence.

6. Debunked — UK Nurses 

A viral Facebook video claims that five UK nurses have died after receiving COVID-19 vaccinations. Reuters debunks this nonsense.

7. Following Up — Google Suspends Second Ethicist

We’ve written about Google firing AI ethicist Timnit Gebru after she refused to remove the company’s name from a research paper submitted to a peer-review journal. Now a second senior ethicist has been locked out of her accounts. CNBC has coverage.

8. Protip — Were Your Flickr Photos Used To Build Facial Recognition?

Exposing.AI is a great new website which searches six large facial recognition databases to see if your Flickr photos appear in them to help train the algorithm. MegaFace, the largest database, has 3.5 million images downloaded from Flickr.

9. Screening Room – Leica’s Witnesses

 10. Coffee Break – Playing Music on (Yes) Watermelon Slices

To be fair, the musician also uses kiwi for percussion. You can do the same with this music controller that creates a circuit between your body and the fruit. Read, watch, and listen.

11. Sign of the Times

  1. Good Monday Morning

It’s January 25th. We are back after observing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day last week and will be on our regular schedule until Presidents Day. 

Microsoft reports earnings after tomorrow’s bell. Apple and Facebook do the same Wednesday.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,027 words — about a 4 minute read.

  2. News To Know Now

a. TikTok is averaging more user time than Facebook for the first time ever. TikTok is also projected to reach one billion monthly active users during 2021. (Search Engine Journal)

b. Alphabet is closing Project Loon, a seven year old project that created internet access points from a balloon piloted in the stratosphere. The service proved useful during natural disasters, but project leader Alastair Westgarth said that the company had not found a way to get costs low enough to build a sustainable long-time business. (Company announcement)

c. Facebook has referred its indefinite suspension of former president Donald Trump to its independent Oversight Board that includes the former prime minister of Denmark, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and many academics, attorneys, and advocates. (Company announcement)

  3.  COVID-19 Tech News

Great Trackers

Overview – Johns Hopkins
Community Mobility – Google
Vaccine Distribution – Washington Post
Risk Calculator – Brown

Coronavirus & Tech News

Apple Watch Can Detect Early COVID-19 – 9 to 5 Mac
Facebook, NYU Partner on Algorithm for X-rays – Facebook
Google Funding Effort to Stop Vaccine Misinfo – Forbes
Hackers Steal & Alter Vaccine Data – Ars Technica
UK Hospitals Using Blockchain to Track Vaccine – CNBC

4. Search Engine News

Privacy-focused search engine Duck Duck Go continues to see volume increases as people look for Google alternatives. Statcounter reports that DDG is now the second most popular search engine for US mobile users, edging out Yahoo and nearly doubling Microsoft Bing’s market share. DDG reached 100 million daily searches for the first time this month according to analysis from Search Engine Journal

Google likely isn’t worried since its market share in most countries is ninety percent or better. That still includes Australia although the company has said it will remove its search engine from Australia if it is forced to agree to pay media outlets for news content. French regulators ruled last year that the company must pay news agencies in that country. Google announced last Thursday that it would begin negotiating individual agreements with French publishers.

What’s the difference? The Australian law is proposed. The French law was on the books, and regulators there said Google’s operations violated it.

5. In The Spotlight — 5 Things I Learned From Parler

The period following Princess Diana’s death in an auto accident twenty-three years ago became a case study in communications. People sought to feel connected to the event and overwhelmed the British government’s digital resources.

Conservative social media network Parler is overwhelmed in a similar way for very different reasons. We told you back in November that two-year old Parler was funded by one-time Breitbart investors David Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. While Breitbart is a discredited, deceptive website, it is a business success thanks to tapping the same emotions as the grief over the British royal.

Today, Parler is hosted on Russian servers due to a judge’s decision to not order Amazon Web Services to reinstate Parler. The site’s poor coding and lack of security allowed a researcher to download 80 terabytes of public Parler posts and videos legally. Even the mobile application remains down as of this writing, yet the company remains defiant.

The data scraped from the site allowed Gizmodo to track user locations of Parler posts. The work they did during the investigation showed that terrorists advanced farther into the Capitol than had been previously known. In addition, they identified individuals who posted to the site while in police stations or from U.S. military bases.ProPublica went a step further and posted a stunning series of minute-by-minute videos from in and outside the Capitol during the attack. Mediaite created what may be the best headline of Parler’s role in the event: “Selfie-Happy insurrectionists have created over 140,000 pieces of evidence for FBI — and counting.”

What I Learned From Parler

1. Prepare for your best case scenario to work out.
2. Don’t allow criminals or legally dubious customers in your business.
3. Security and privacy are the table stakes in the online world.
4. Closing is sometimes the best option. Don’t fall prey to sunk costs.
5. Don’t believe your own press clippings.

  6. Debunked — National Guard in D.C.

At the inauguration of President Joe Biden, conspiracy theories spread when some National Guard members were viewed on video facing away from the road.

According to Snopes, some service members were ordered to observe from that direction.

7. Following Up — Facebook Payouts

We mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci’s appearance two weeks ago on The Try Guys YouTube channel and mistakenly replaced YouTube channel subscribers with video views Old friend Bob Kovacs reached out and reminded me of the difference. Bob has more than a dozen videos with at least 100,000 views each, but plenty of others with much smaller numbers despite his 13,000 subscribers. Here’s the link to Bob and his creative wife Mary Ellen’s 2020 Christmas tree video card on YouTube.

We reported last July that Facebook was planning to pay Illinois users for violating their facial recognition laws. This week, we found out that each Illinois user will receive a $338 check — less than a third of the state’s recommended payment, but $550 million in actual payout. Ars Technica has details.

8. Protip – Zoom’s Hidden Watermarks

You may not be surprised to learn that people can figure out who has leaked a videoconference recording. Lifehacker describes some of the watermarking tools at your organization’s disposal.

9. Screening Room – Draw Ketchup

   10. Coffee Break

Jimmy Buffet fans are known as Parrotheads, but real parrots apparently sing along when their human plays Led Zeppelin. Man, we’ve all had a lot of extra time at home. Rock out on Twitter.

11. Sign of the Times

Good Monday morning. It’s January 11th. SpaceX Dragon undocks from the International Space Station today and will splash down near Florida tonight. Details, including tracking information, at NASA.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,209 words–about a 4  1/2 minute read.

Reminder: there’s no Spotlight next week as we observe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

1. News to Know Now

a. Haven, the health care startup formed by Amazon, JP Morgan, and Berkshire Hathaway has closed. The companies reported that they continue to work on their own health initiatives although Amazon did not comment on a report that it plans to offer medical care to non-employees. Amazon Pharmacy opened in the U.S. in mid-November.

b. Amazon’s delivery systems, booming during the pandemic, will be augmented by its purchase of 11 planes and changing drone requirements. The Wall Street Journal reported during the weekend that Amazon and Walmart are using new algorithms to determine whether it makes economic sense to process a return for cheaper items or whether to refund some customers and allow them to keep or donate an item.

c. Consumers who filed their taxes with TurboTax are having their stimulus checks routed to them now after a delay. H & R Block and TurboTax maker Intuit use temporary bank accounts to process payments, and the federal government attempted to use those account numbers for stimulus payments. This Lifehacker article can help if you use those products and believe that you’re missing a payment.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations
Google County-Level Mobility Reports

NEW:State-by-state vaccine distribution tracker
NEW:Johns Hopkins & Maryland Personal Mortality Risk Calculator
NEW:Brown Medical School’s COVID Risk Calculator

COVID-19 Tech News

Amazon Eases New Seller Delivery Requirements  – CNBC
Amazon To Vaccinate Warehouse, Whole Foods Staff – Seattle Times
COVID Misinfo Superspreaders Thriving on Facebook – The Hill
Google Offering Free Weekly COVID Tests to Employees – The Verge
Microsoft Gives $110 Million More to Nonprofits, Schools – Microsoft
Newest COVID Weapon: AI That Speed-Reads Faxes – Wired

3. Search Engine News

Two new nontraditional search resources are being tested in Google search results.

The first is a short-form video carousel that will allow people searching on mobile to play Instagram or TikTok videos without leaving Google. Google also owns a pretty big video site called YouTube, and they already show those videos in search results.

There is also news of a homework module in Google search results using information repurposed from homework software companies. Search Engine Land was able to find samples that showed test questions, hints, and help. 

Our take: You must be aware of this trend if you are involved in creating any sort of content. Google will eventually try to parse the information into its own search results. That means that creating value-added content is more important than ever. Consider fact aggregation a dead end if it can be replicated with time or money.

3. Search Engine News

Two new nontraditional search resources are being tested in Google search results.

The first is a short-form video carousel that will allow people searching on mobile to play Instagram or TikTok videos without leaving Google. Google also owns a pretty big video site called YouTube, and they already show those videos in search results.

There is also news of a homework module in Google search results using information repurposed from homework software companies. Search Engine Land was able to find samples that showed test questions, hints, and help. 

Our take: You must be aware of this trend if you are involved in creating any sort of content. Google will eventually try to parse the information into its own search results. That means that creating value-added content is more important than ever. Consider fact aggregation a dead end if it can be replicated with time or money.

4. In the Spotlight — SolarWinds Hack Explained

The SolarWinds hack is a really big deal. Let us highlight what happened and what could happen so you can ask the proper questions in your organization.

We now know that the Russian government hacked three companies that make network software: SolarWinds, Microsoft, and VMware. Russian agents planted malware in the software, and it was spread to hundreds of federal and private sector networks throughout most of 2020. 

We learn more each day about the networks that were compromised. The Justice Department acknowledged last week that the hackers have breached its email system and read emails. We also learned that sealed court records were also at risk.

In addition to DOJ, parts of the Defense, State, Treasury, and Homeland Security networks were compromised. Direct agencies affected include the Pentagon, NIH, and the Nuclear Security Administration. State and local agencies including Pima County, Arizona, where Tucson is located, and Austin, Texas, were also hit as was hardware maker Cisco Systems, Cox Communications, and Equifax.

Although his administration has said otherwise, President Donald Trump blames China, not Russia, for the attack, and has inaccurately said that the hack is under control. We will not understand the extent of the systems and functions compromised for years if not longer. One example: Microsoft acknowledges that the Russian government now has the source code for its industry standard Office 365 software including Outlook email software.

Our take: Designate someone in your organization to be your point person on the SolarWinds hack or you’ll run the risk of multiple people only understanding parts of the issue. Have them work with your IT people to understand your vulnerability and to monitor news.

5. Debunked — Fun with Dr. Fauci

The Try Guys is a YouTube based show that grew from a popular BuzzFeed feature. Consider them adorkable — four guys in their early 30s who do goofy things together.

On Friday they released a 15 minute interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci. They have more than 7 million subscribers so Fauci talking with them is no different from him talking with a network news show. Plus he laughs a lot because they’re goofballs.

This is the perfect thing to watch with tweens and teens or just to get a refresher on how the vaccines work while shutting down any disinformation about it.

6. Following Up — Capitol IT Security Mess

In addition to coping with the SolarWinds hack, the IT team at the Capitol is dealing with unknown IT issues resulting from the terror attack there last week by supporters of President Donald Trump.

At least one laptop is known to be missing, and any devices or logged in equipment have to be thoroughly checked. The staff also has to look now for hidden microphones and cameras. 

Wired has a fantastic piece examining the issue.

7. Protip — Tips Worth Your Time

Catchall tip columns are often hit-or-miss, but this lovely USA Today piece has a little something for everyone. I had no idea that the symbol on USB cables guide you into correctly plugging them in.

You’ll also learn about back taps on iPhones and where Zoom keeps its “Touch Up My Appearance” option. Yes, that’s really a thing. 

Read it here.

Screening Room — Sibling Trade

9. Coffee Break — A Fifteen Foot Tall Piano

Again, fifteen feet tall, not wide.

Have a listen here, and watch its inventor show you around.

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