Tech Essentials

In the past, for individuals and small businesses, cyber security was important to mitigate the inconvenience of spam, viruses that required restoring back-ups of corrupt files, and letters to credit bureaus to clear up identity theft issues.

Do Recommendation Engines Make Us Simpler Minded? Recommendation engines operate behind the scenes everywhere, to make life a little more enjoyable, simpler, and more relevant. But do these make us all narrower minded?

Folklore of Opportunistic Privacy There is a wide body of people that believe they are sending information private because they are sending using Microsoft Office 365, Gmail, or using a third-party service that sends all messages using transmission layer security.

Pig Latin, Russian Spies and Email Encryption With the recent media focus on cybersecurity, whether it is talk of Russian hackers scheming to influence US presidential elections, or the pervasive pressure to comply with GDPR or HIPAA (healthcare privacy regulations) or other consumer data privacy requirements, “encryption” is one of the solutions that is often […]

Most would agree that “who said what when” is at the centre of most disputes. In today’s email-centric world, many turn to their “Sent Folder” or “Inbox” to demonstrate who said what when. They may forward these emails to the people with whom they are in dispute, or may print the email to serve as […]

Most disputes center on who said what to whom and when. When an email gets lost without the sender being aware, the entire conversation or negotiation can derail, and there can be serious financial and/or reputational damage as a consequence.

How to Say ‘Leave Me Alone’ without an ‘Opposite Shock’ A year ago, there was a sudden “shock” to the world that caused mass disruption in people’s normal routines, forcing an uncomfortable behavioral change for most. This pandemic-induced shift to an isolated work-from-home (WFH) routine should become a shibboleth once vaccines flow freely. But perhaps […]

Most technology (software and biotech) entrepreneurs and R&D engineers that toil over pioneering true innovation have come to know Alice. Alice is quite moody, and those that have invested buckets of sweat and their cash savings into creating new innovation in America now pray that Alice’s moodiness does not someday cause all of their hard […]

5-Star Reviews for Sale! As Tech Essentials readers hunker down for holiday online shopping, it’s a good time to remind you what to consider before you make that final click to purchase. Do you trust the reviews you read online and believe all the comments when they are all overwhelmingly positive and the product has hundreds of […]

Today’s NFL coaches are concerned that the new players being drafted are millennials and they will need to be treated differently – they report that football playmaking classroom training sessions need to be limited to 30 minutes, with breaks for the athletes to check their phones, text messages, and social media feeds.