You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’! Yep, times are still changing, as more public company boards are lending their ears to digital directors who can develop their online marketing, social media and mobile device strategies.  “Content marketing” is the new buzzword on everyone’s lips, and C-suite execs are finding themselves “increasingly ill-equipped in the boardroom” and, in many cases, digitally illiterate. This may be enough to scare many into hurriedly making a Facebook or Twitter page – but it’s not the whole…

One of the most personal online violations that can occur to anyone is getting hacked. It could be a personal attack such as a Facebook account, on which 600k successful hacks are achieved daily. It could be something more general such as a database hack that exposes personal information. It could be much, much worse. With all of the security measures out there and counter-hacking attempts, many systems and accounts can be easily secured by having a strong password. There are plenty of hacks that can hit a system or an account that have nothing to do with front door password access, so there’s no reason…

It was a problem that had been solved for all intents and purposes years ago when YouTube put the power into the hands of major copyright owners. Now, WSJ has uncovered that a new round of full-length movie uploads has been creeping onto YouTube, some of which have received millions of views. Google launched the Content ID tool and gave it to 4000 major publishers such as Disney and Sony in 2007. The problem of illegally uploaded content shifted away from YouTube and onto torrent sites and other file-sharing services. The shift didn’t last forever. The fight against content piracy was revolutionized…

Mark this down as technological idiocy. It isn’t just that the “Make Me Asian” app (and it’s lesser-known cousins, “Make Me Indian”, “Make Me Russian”, “Make Me Frankenstein”, and “Make Me Fat”) used stereotypes to encourage racist humor. It isn’t just that the apps themselves were not that good at delivering what they promised. No, the real idiocy comes in the form of effort: why would anyone put in an ounce of effort to create something that they should have known with an absolute certainty would be removed? You can’t chalk it up to infamy. The username, “KimbereyDeiss”, does not appear to be real….

We reported earlier that the NY Times is finding success with its paywall model for generating revenues and increasing profits. On the other side of the fence is News Corp, which has walked along similar paths over the past couple of years but can’t seem to find the right mix and is now showing a loss of $2.1 billion in its recent SEC filing. According to Techcrunch: The non-cash loss is attributed to the closing of the News of the World as well as “a write-down of New News Corporation’s goodwill of approximately $1.3 billion and a write-down of the indefinite-lived intangible assets (primarily…

Most industry experts (AKA Tech Bloggers) thought that when the NY Times website went to an online subscription model in March, 2011, that it was the beginning of the end for the once proud media giant. It was called a desperate move that would not yield the results that they were expecting. The general opinion was that a free and open internet was the way to go and embracing it by generating revenue through online advertising made much more sense than asking people who were used to free news to suddenly pay up to read what they can find on other sites. Everyone who felt this way was apparently wrong. The…