Tech News Stop - Sharing by Wasim Akhtar

Trump Resorts To Ad-Tracking, Targeted Messages

So much for the flop-haired candidate’s social media-only Presidential campaign. Donald Trump, who’s looking for all the world like the Republican party’s nominee for November’s election (in case you were still wondering what a “presumptive” nominee is), has taken a lot of heat for his hits and misses on social media, including last week’s glorious fiasco praising Scotland for taking back their country despite the majority vote to remain in the EU.

Now, no longer content (or is it effective?) with just Twitter and Facebook as he initially boasted, Trump’s team has signed on with internet marketing software firm Rocket Fuel to not only track users’ interaction with his messages, but also to target internet users with ads based on a number of different algorithms.

The Republican party as a whole has already been using Rocket Fuel for previous engagement strategies, and had announced earlier that it would be relying on the software platform for all of its 2016 campaigning. That means using this approach in an attempt to secure everything from the White House and Congress down to the runoff race for a small town landfill operator.

Of course, it would be wrong to imply that Trump is turning to ad-tracking like it’s some nefarious attempt at mind control. Democratic nominees and victors alike have already relied on the technology sector to help them understand what issues the public cares about, or rather, what campaign promises voters want to hear, whether they ever come to pass or not. It is interesting, though, that Trump’s team aligns with this software shortly after he fired his campaign manager and brought in some new blood, and after it was discovered that his opponent has nearly forty times the campaign funding in the bank that he does.

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Supporting Bay Area nonprofits focused on homelessness

“How many homeless people are in San Francisco?” “How do people become homeless?” “How can I help homeless people?”

These are just some of the questions people ask Google about homelessness in San Francisco, according to Google Trends. Many of these questions don’t have simple answers, and decades of efforts have not significantly moved the needle. There are more than 6,600 homeless people in the city, many of whom are children. People who experience homelessness often struggle from chronic stress, trauma, and frequent moves, and are unable to take advantage of many educational or economic opportunities.

We want to do our part in tackling this complex issue. Since 2014, Google.org has invested more than $5 million in Bay Area nonprofits who are working to combat homelessness, and today we’re committing an additional $1.2 million for these efforts. The Google News Lab is also joining the San Francisco Chronicle and 70+ news outlets across the country to help raise awareness as part of the Beyond Homelessness initiative, launching today.

The organizations we’re supporting are tackling the issue of homelessness in new ways and from multiple angles, and include Hamilton Family Center, Larkin Street Youth Services, HandUp, First Place for Youth, Lava Mae, LifeMoves, Abode Services - Project Welcome Home, GLIDE, Downtown Streets Team and Destination: Home.

In San Francisco and across the Bay area, these 10 organizations provide a range of services and programs focused on rapid re-housing and prevention, basic services, job training and more. Our newest grantee, Destination: Home, plans to use their $1 million grant to build a rapid re-housing system for homeless families in Mountain View and Sunnyvale in the form of security deposits, motel stays, time-limited rental assistance, move-in assistance, and a support system to make sure individuals and families find stable housing.

HandUp has helped both homeless and low-income individuals and families overcome poverty via a giving platform that connects donors directly with neighbors who are struggling to meet basic needs. The Downtown Streets Team provides a work experience program for homeless men and women through beautification projects in San Francisco’s Civic Center/Mid-Market neighborhoods. And Lava Mae is expanding their mobile showers for the homeless to Los Angeles with an additional $200K in Google.org grant funding.

The Downtown Streets Team helps people like Norman “Will” Williams gain work experience. Learn more on their website.

One in 25 kids in San Francisco Unified School District are homeless, and many families face at least a nine-month wait list for temporary shelter. In 2015, we supported the Hamilton Family Center (HFC) with a $1 million grant aimed to reduce the homeless family wait list for shelter by creating direct lines of communication with SFUSD teachers and staff to report and respond to new and potential cases of homelessness. HFC has already seen a 25 percent reduction in the family wait list, and hopes to continue that momentum.
Homelessness in our cities is a challenge decades in the making—and will require continued innovation and dedication to solve. We’re committed to helping, through financial support, volunteering and raising awareness. Find out more about this issue on our Google Trends site and join us in finding solutions by visiting Beyond Homelessness or contributing to any of our grantee organizations.

Posted by Justin Steele, Bay Area Giving Lead, Google.org

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Firefox 47.0.1

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Mozilla Firefox is a fast, light and tidy open source web browser. At its public launch in 2004 Mozilla Firefox was the first browser to challenge Microsoft Internet Explorer’s dominance. Since then, Mozilla Firefox has consistently featured in the top 3 most popular browsers globally. The key features that have made Mozilla Firefox so popular are ...

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Firefox 48.0 Beta 4

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Firefox 47.0.1 64-bit

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Microsoft Shells Out $10000 For Unwanted Windows 10 Upgrade

Microsoft has found itself in the position of paying a California woman $10,000 compensation over an unwanted Windows 10 upgrade, that left her computer unusable.

Teri Goldstein took Microsoft to court after she said her Windows 7 computer automatically started updating itself to Windows 10… without her permission.

Windows 10

The story, originally published in the Seattle Times, alleges that the upgrade to Windows 10 for Goldstein failed, and left her system performing poorly when it did work, and began randomly crashing, and also becoming unusable for several days.

Goldstein initially contacted Microsoft customer service to try and get some help with the issue, but filed a law suit once it became clear the tech giant would be unable to solve her computer’s issues.

The $10,000 Microsoft gave her reflected lost income from her business and also the cost of replacement hardware.

Microsoft did initially appeal the court order but quickly dropped the appeal when news outlets started picking up on the story, possibly hoping it would disappear quickly lest others follow Goldstein’s lead.

A Microsoft spokesperson stated that the company denied any wrongdoing but had dropped the appeal to avoid the expense of further litigation.

Goldstein herself told the Seattle Times that she had ‘never heard of Windows 10…Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to update.’

Microsoft themselves have come under some heavy criticism in the last year with regards to their aggressive push to get Windows 7 and 8.1 users to upgrade to Windows 10. While take-up of the free upgrade to Windows 10 has been very successful, they have been accused of using malware like style tactics in order to force people to begin the Windows 10 upgrade.

Stories about Windows 10 beginning the upgrade process all by itself are numerous across the internet.

In February, the company changed tack once again by bundling the Windows 10 upgrade in with its security updates and making it a “recommended update”, which meant it was automatically downloaded and installed active steps were taken by users to block the upgrade.

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AdBlock 3.0.6.1576

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AdBlock is a really useful ad blocking extension for Google's Chrome browser. It helps to block any annoying ads from interrupting your web browsing experience. AdBlock is a very powerful tool that blocks almost every ad you can think of, including pre-video ads on YouTube. When AdBlock is running and blocking ads, you will see the AdBlock logo glo...

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