Five Interesting Things: Today’s Scan Hits
Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.
- A survey conducted by digital analytic firm Annalect has found that consumer concern about online security and personal privacy concerns has jumped since the NSA data collection revelations by Edward Snowden. According to Annalect’s data, which comes from an already on-going longitudinal survey of online privacy, 37% of Internet users who were concerned about the revelations made changes to online behavior.
- BlinkLink is an online counterpart to SnapChat. The service limits how many people can view a photo before ‘self-destructs.” This could be used to enhance privacy or create a sense of immediacy and exclusivity around the content.
- Clothing retailer J. Crew, which began as a catalog-only retailer before opening brick-and-mortar outlets, has published its September 2013 catalog exclusively on Pinterest.
- Apple has patented a technology that can temporarily shut down smartphone cameras and prevent image and video sharing in specifc GPS-defined areas. Such a technology could be useful in “geofencing” secure facilities, or even movie theaters. A more ominous application would be in giving police the ability to shut down smartphone recorders during protests, riots, or during police chases and arrests.
- The Working Mother Research Institute has found that nearly three-fourths of working mothers in the US would choose not to work full-time if their financial circumstances didn’t require it –in other words, they “equate work with something done only to pick up a paycheck.”