Coming to a store near you: 'Do Not Track'

Real-world 'Do Not Track' coming to retail stores

When you're shopping online, often times you're being tracked so that ads relevant to the stores where you shop will pop up on other sites you use. Kind of creepy, right? Well, what if that's also happening to you when you shop in real life?

According to the above article, multiple retail locations have been testing new technology that uses your cell phone to track you as you shop. This technology can tell what aisle you're in, what you're looking at, and even how long you spent looking at certain products.

Senator Charles Schumer is incredibly unsettled by this technology. He is currently working to implement rules that state that stores utilizing this technology must display signs explaining the tracking and offering people the right to opt-out. As it stands now, though, majority of people are not informed of this technology -- and it is in use as we speak.

I do majority of my grocery shopping at Stop and Shop. The store implemented a cool technology that allows consumers to scan their grocery items as they shop, then scan a barcode at the register and have their entire grocery order come up. This eliminates long checkout lines and makes for a faster shopping experience overall. Another part of the technology, though, is it tracks you as you move across the store and sends coupons to the scanner when you're in front of certain products. This seems to be where this tracking technology involving cell phones is heading; but somehow it seems less invasive when the coupons are going to a product directly linked to the store.

Consumer privacy is being seriously violated with this technology. Hopefully the rules go into effect soon, because if not, I'm not going to feel comfortable Christmas shopping this year...

Google Hangouts for iOS

Google Hangouts for iOS dials up free calls for US, Canada

Google Hangouts are a great way to connect with people without being face-to-face. Now, iOS has picked up on this market and created a Google Hangouts app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch which will allow users to make outgoing calls and receive incoming calls to a Google Voice number, free of charge.

This app will really make a difference in the world of internet calling programs. While users will have to pay for calls outside of the US and Canada, calls within those locations will not use cell phone minutes (it will, however, use data, but on WiFi should be fine).

Like Skype, the Google Hangouts app will allow users to have meetings or talk in a digital "face-to-face" format. In the corporate world, for people who use iPads or other iOS devices at work, this app could be a way to hold group meetings without actually getting together.

This is another app that will really help the corporate world. Meetings will be made easier for Google users -- and they won't have to pay for the minutes.

Twitter Parrot

Twitter's Latest Experiement Parrots Breaking News

My mom gets CNN Breaking News Alerts to her phone via text message. Often, it's incredibly helpful, especially when we were going through Hurricane Sandy last year. In the world of constant connection, breaking news can come from all kinds of sources: CNN News Alerts through text or email, Facebook and Twitter updates from news outlets, and much more.

But Twitter is experimenting with a new way to get breaking news to its users: an account called @EventParrot. Followers of the @EventParrot account will receive a direct message (not a Tweet) when breaking news is released. The direct message will summarize the story and link users to the Twitter page of whichever news outlet the story came from.

In order to receive the breaking news as a text, the user can configure their account to alert them via text message when they receive the Twitter direct message. Easy enough. I also think it's neat that it will seemingly compile news stories from all news outlets across the world; the picture in the initial post about it shows direct messages featuring stories from CNN and BBC. Now, instead of subscribing to many news outlets, you can follow @EventParrot and have stories from all over the world sent right to your phone.

While it's still in the initial phases of use, I'm sure @EventParrot will become a very useful source for getting the news of the world. I'm not the kind of person who subscribes to news updates, but for those of you who are, check out @EventParrot and see what it's all about.

[EDIT]: I was actually thinking that this same kind of system could be used in other ways. For example, a company could create a private Twitter account and direct message employees who utilize the system with updates, news, and alerts relevant to the company. We'll see what happens!

IFTTT

Automate All the Things: How to Get Started with IFTTT.

You know when you read an article about something and you think, "wow, I never knew I needed this until now"? That's how I'm feeling about a program called IFTTT - If This Then That. 

IFTTT seems a little complicated at first, and I'll admit, I had to read their "Learn More" page before I could actually figure out what this program does, but it's actually pretty cool. The article explains that the program stitches together programs that would normally never interact; for example, Foursquare and Google Calendar.

The program starts with a channel. IFTTT has 71 channels that include social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr, along with email and iOS programs. The next part, "this," describes what's called a trigger. The IFTTT "Learn More" gives the example of being tagged in a photo on Facebook as a trigger. "That" defines the action that then occurs. So, for example, if you check in on Foursquare, then the check in is added to Google Calendar.

It's kind of confusing, and I think it would take some practice to figure it all out, but for productive people, this is a way of making your apps work together. You can make Twitter send anything tagged #FB to Facebook. You can make certain tagged photos in Instagram go to your email. The possibilities are vast.

For the workplace, this app would be great for all sorts of things; automatically putting events into the calendar, sending meeting remiders via email, etc. With the amount of apps this program supports, IFTTT is a great way to manage all sorts of things.