Tyler’s Weblog

So yet another reason to stay off social networking sites has sprung up, this time dealing with Facebook’s key advertising platform known as “Beacon.” It turns out that Beacon can track users’ activities even when they are not logged in. Beacon was intended to track certain activities of users on certain sites and would report the activities to the user’s friends. Users had the option of not being tracked or reported on their activities. It just so happens that now Beacon is tracking and reporting activities whether the user is logged in or not and whether they like it or not. Beacon has been under criticism lately by several groups and this new finding won’t help its case. If a user checks the “Remember Me” box in order to keep from logging in every time, they are at risk of being watched every time they surf the internet.

I have never enjoyed putting much personal information online. Personally, the less people know about me and my activities, the better. This kind of stuff is happening more and more, there is spyware and hacking can be done in seconds. Is anything safe? How do I know that if I decide to purchase movie tickets from Fandango, my credit card information isn’t being saved and distributed to all of my friends, or even worse, people who don’t know me at all. As an advertising major, I have to think that this can’t be helping the business of online and interactive advertising. With so many people suffering from identity theft, and so many more reasons of why not to trust the internet arising, how difficult is it going to be to convince people to go out and get a product from the internet. It doesn’t matter how high tech a company is, if it can’t keep the trust of it’s customers, then it will crumble in a relatively short time. Technology has never been the most trustworthy tool, and I can safely assume that this incident didn’t help at all.

So I was just scrolling through some of the new tech gadgets while I was looking for presents for family and friends and I saw some things that I had to take a second look at. The first one is just plain weird… the second one is just plain sad… So what are they? Good question! The first is something that every mini-van driving mom and beer chugging hooligan will both add to their Christmas shopping lists. Me? I add it to my “pointless” list. So let me set the mood for this one. You are watching television in the middle of a soccer field and you decide you want to play soccer. The only problem is, all you have is the tv and the remote. Well, since I know this happens to everyone atleast twice a week, I have the answer. There is now, available for purchase, a soccer ball that is also a television remote… Yeah, I’ll say that again because like me, I’m sure you don’t believe what you just read: There is a soccer ball that doubles as a television remote. The ball has buttons and batteries but don’t worry, you can play a World Cup match with the exact same ball. Some things were meant to be combined. Peanut butter and jelly… great combo… cameras and phones… a little bit excessive but still nice sometimes… soccer ball and television remote… are you kidding? I guess that people have figured out that soccer is so boring to watch on television that they should even give the players a chance to change the channel. You can buy this thing online for about $40… and then kick yourself for making such a ridiculous purchase.

The second item is more sad than it is stupid. You can now purchase a wristband that is equipped with Bluetooth. The wristband will let you know when you are receiving a phone call. This isn’t new, there was already a wristband that did the same thing called the “BlueQ” except it didn’t really work. You may be saying, yeah, this is a tiny bit strange, but it’s not sad. But wait, there’s more! The wristband will alert you when you go more than 15 feet away from your phone! Are you serious?!?!? Why don’t they simply design the wristbands to look like handcuffs? If you are tethered to your phone that much then you need a lot more than a bracelet to help you out. What a nice holiday gift! You can now feel like you are under house arrest or a Labrador crossing an invisible fence whenever you leave your room without your phone! You can buy the bracelet for around $48 but maybe they could think about combining it with a watch so it actually serves a real purpose.

In conclusion, yes, technology is great but there are some things that should stay away from production.