With Snapcash, users simply type out the dollar amount they’d like to send as part of any private message — for example, “here’s $5 for lunch.” The app recognizes the “$5” text and a green payments button illuminates next to the keyboard. Users can then tap that button to activate the payment, which is completed once the message has been sent.
Via: Snapchat to Let You Send Money to Friends, Thanks to Square | Re/code.
Today, I attended the MIMA Summit in Minneapolis.
This year’s theme was “Rise of the Machines”. The general theme for the day was the intersection between marketing and technology. From connected devices, to marketing automation to data informed execution.
I don’t think I took a single note during the keynotes from Jaron Lanier, Dean Kamen and Amy Webb. I threw a few tweets out, but really was just trying to keep up with minds far more active than mine.
Don't address the fear of smart machines. Address stupid people. #mimasummit
— Carl Bliss (@ckbliss) October 15, 2014
"If you believe in machines too much, you make the machines worse." –@RealJaronLanier #mimasummit
— Greg Swan (@gregswan) October 15, 2014
"Unless we get these devices to the people who need them, they are just science fair projects" – Dean Kamen #mimasummit
— Carl Bliss (@ckbliss) October 15, 2014
I'm sitting next to General Mills. Dean Kamen challenged them to put a scientist on a Wheaties Box. #mimasummit
— Carl Bliss (@ckbliss) October 15, 2014
Don’t use data to just define audience. ASK: How can we use data to listen and react to our audience better? #mimasummit
— Amy Webb 🤷🏻♀️ (@amywebb) October 15, 2014
"All the bits online come from people. Smart machines are only a threat to us if we believe in them." –@RealJaronLanier #mimasummit
— Greg Swan (@gregswan) October 15, 2014
Digging into the breakout sessions:
Garrick van Buren reminded me that you CAN be an “expert in digital products”, yet prevent them from controlling your life.
He provided a few simple questions to help assess technology adoption. These are good for personal or corporate decision making:
Does my technology save labor? Or just give me more places to work? #mimasummit
— Carl Bliss (@ckbliss) October 15, 2014
Lisa Maria Martin keyed on on content process. She pointed out that we’re always interested in the processes of other creative minds and organizations, because we want to be able to replicate that creative process and outcome. However, process is never clean.
Lisa suggest we start by mapping out our reality. Audit our process:
Once you’ve audited your content process, write it… or draw it… or document it in someway with your team.
Start with what you’re actually doing, and adjust it from that point.
Our content workflow will add value to our content strategy.
The UN may be poised to take over Internet regulation.
Much of the success of the Internet can be attributed to it’s open nature. No single government controls it. Since it’s inception, the Internet has been self regulated, with some of the earliest engineers still involved in setting standards.
At it’s purest, it can cross geographic and idealogical boundaries. That can cause a problem if you run a nation that tries to set some pretty strict idealogical boundaries (or even tax boundaries).
A number of UN nations would love to see that change.
From the Wall Street Journal:
For more than a year, these countries have lobbied an agency called the International Telecommunications Union to take over the rules and workings of the Internet. Created in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, the ITU last drafted a treaty on communications in 1988, before the commercial Internet, when telecommunications meant voice telephone calls via national telephone monopolies.
Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla.
via: Crovitz: The U.N.’s Internet Sneak Attack – WSJ.
You can’t patent an abstract idea… but can you patent the processing of that idea through a computer?
In a 9-0 ruling today, the Supreme Court says “not entirely” (here in PDF form)
In the case “Alice Corporation vs CLS Bank”, Alice Corporation maintains a series of patents on processes used to mitigate the risk of a settlement in a transaction. Essentially (if I’m reading this right) a process for making sure both parties in a transaction meet their obligation.
The court determined that the concepts behind the process were not patent eligible (affirming lower court rulings along the same lines), and that simply processing them through a computer did not add to that eligibility.
From the court decision:
We hold that the claims at issue are drawn to the abstract idea of intermediated settlement, and that merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.
What this means:
This seems to open the floodgate to challenges on hundreds of thousands of software patents, according to some.
More via:
UPDATE: Wow… this is a frustratingly addicting app. It isn’t that I have to reply with an image… I have to provide an image, to view the “locked” image that was sent to me.
That just opens up an endless loop of image sharing!
The app also allows me to “Reply” to an image in an unlocked format. I’ve had a little fun with the form-function on that feature…
(ORIGINAL POST)
Facebook is set to roll out a new “disposable message” app “Slingshot” today.
Similar to other apps like Snapchat, and the recently shuttered Facebook Poke, Slingshot allows the user to share a photo or video moment with a friend, or a group.
The next step, however, is where the app differentiates itself a little. In order to reply, you also have to include an image or short video. If you want to participate, you have to do more than just comment.
With Slingshot, we saw an opportunity to create something new and different: a space where you can share everyday moments with lots of people at once.
In response to a cease and desist from Verizon, David Hyman (general counsel at Netflix) offered a letter in response.
Along with a description of Netflix “ongoing transparency efforts”, Hyman offers this picture:
To try to shift blame to us for performance issues arising from interconnection congestion is like blaming drivers on a bridge for traffic jams when you’re the one who decided to leave three lanes closed during rush hour.
Via: Netflix vs Verizon Internet streaming speed squable | BGR.
Here’s another takeaway from this year’s “Internet Trends” report (http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends)
As individuals, we are migrating from sharing with our entire ecosystem of contacts (The Facebook status update?), and more with a smaller group of friends (Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp).
Or rather:… Increasingly, our social interactions happen with smaller groups.
Implications:
Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report from KPCB has become an annual event for the connected world.
You can check it out all 164 slides of goodness here.
Like so many others (much smarter than I) I started putting together a post with my key observations and takeaways, but it started to get pretty long. So, I did thought what any good blogger would think… “Hey… a series!”
So, over the next week or two, I’m planning to trickle out some fairly digestible takeaways, observations and implications.
Today… it’s all mobile.
I think we’ve been here before… but the numbers continue to astound.
Tablet usage is up 52% in the last year, and mobile now makes up 25% of Internet traffic (up from 14% last year).
What this means…
This means we need continue to assess our experiences in the mobile space. I need to keep an eye on my entire engagement platform
Some key communication mechanisms like email and social could even be considered “Mobile First” (They should look good on mobile, even if it’s at the expense of Desktop).
With every digital initiative, we should be asking “how will this experience be on a phone or tablet?”
As this position becomes uniform across the industry, U.S. tech companies will ignore the instructions stamped on the fronts of subpoenas urging them not to alert subjects about data requests, industry lawyers say. Companies that already routinely notify users have found that investigators often drop data demands to avoid having suspects learn of inquiries.
