Neal's Notes

Watch any NFL game on Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and you’ll see a bevy of commercials espousing that a given car or truck model is sleek, rough, tough, cool, fuel efficient, family-friendly, sporty, ad nauseum. Adjectives like these are music to a car/truck marketer’s ears.

What you don’t see or hear very often is that hackers continue to pose a threat to all sorts of vehicle models – and even smart charging stations for electronic vehicles (EV) may be vulnerable to hacking. Granted, there haven’t been any major security breakdowns and security professionals say that auto manufacturers are making inroads in improving software security. In fact, Andrew Brown, chief technologist for Delphi Automotive said recently that “quite honestly, the vehicles, systems and components today are quite robust and resistant to cyber-security threats.  But that doesn’t mean it’s 100%.”

Added Ed Adams, a security expert:

“There’s an awful lot of code throughout the entire supply chain, not just with the auto manufacturers, but with the infotainment systems and applications like Sirius and Harmon. The fact of life is that software is flawed.”

Cheryl Dancey Balough and Richard C. Balough, co-founders of Chicago-based Balough Law Offices, LLC, said today’s cars have dozens of electrical control units (ECUs) embedded in the body, doors, dash, roof, trunk, seats, wheels, navigation equipment and entertainment centers.

“This architecture provides almost unlimited gateways for external hacking and infection with malware. Some entry points to a car’s ECUs require a direct, hard-wired connection, while others can be accessed wirelessly, including using Wi-Fi or radio-frequency identification (RFID). Once entry is gained, a hacker can take over all of a car’s computer-controlled systems.”

The Baloughs added that in one recent example, a former employee of an Austin, TX-based auto dealer hacked into the computer system and remotely activated the vehicle immobilization system, triggering the ignition system in 100+ vehicles.

“This anti-theft system had been installed by the dealer as a method of addressing non-payment by customers. While the anti-theft device was connected to the car’s horn and ignition, the hacker didn’t take further control of the car,” they noted.

And at last month’s Black Hat conference, security researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller investigated the ‘hackability’ of two dozen different vehicles.

“We examined how a remote attack might work,” said Valasek. “It really depends on the architecture – if you hack the radio, can you send messages to the brakes or the steering?  And if you can, what can you do with them?”

Both researchers emphasized that their results weren’t definitive assertions about actual vehicle security vulnerabilities – they were flagging potential weaknesses.

One model that ranked near the top of the list was the Infiniti Q50 (ironically, which Valasek owns). As reported by Wired, the car “was a model of insecure architecture.” Wired added that the sports sedan has remote keyless entry, Bluetooth, a cellular connection, wireless tire pressure monitoring and an Infiniti Connection system interfacing with a ‘personal assistant’ app on the driver’s smartphone.

“Within the Q50’s network, those radio and telematic components were directly connected to engine and braking systems. And the sedan’s critical driving systems had computer-controlled features like adaptive cruise control and adaptive steering that a hacker could potentially hijack to physically manipulate the car,” said Wired.

Love those remote door locks? Also at Black Hat, Australian security researcher Silvo Cesare illustrated how easy it is to hack a key fob.  According to Wireless Security Watch, Cesare used a software-defined radio to capture and transmit the wireless signals. All the equipment was off-the-shelf – it took Cesare just a few minutes to unlock his girlfriend’s car.

Got a Leaf, Tesla or other EV? Well, your charging station may be vulnerable too.  At last year’s ‘Hack in the Box’ conference in Amsterdam, security analyst Ofer Shezaf said hackers could gain access to smart EV chargers and obtain access to logins and payments.

Again, there hasn’t been a significant security breach at smart charging stations, but digital news outlet Quartz indicated that other technologies for networking/access are being built into smart charging networks. These include RFID, which allow drivers access to power with a touchless card.

“Like using a default or easily guessed password online, these systems could be broken into with little effort,” says Quartz.   “Some charging systems use cellular data connections or even Wi-Fi to connect to other stations or to be accessed for maintenance, also opening doors for hackers.”

Shezaf added that charging networking providers need to take a closer look at security issues. The technology’s still relatively new, but “this is precisely the time to look at it, before it scales up to whole cities and countries.”

As stated earlier, presently, the threat of hackers seizing control of a ‘smart’ car is still minimal, but Andry Rakotonirainy, a professor at Queensland University in Australia, raised a cautionary red flag.

“A vehicle’s communication security over wireless networks cannot be an afterthought and needs to be considered at the early stages of design and deployment from the hardware, software, user and policy point of view,” he said.

Hopefully car and truck manufacturers will get the message and market with another critically important selling angle – that their vehicles are digitally safe.

Drone proponents prefer using the term Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or UAS for Unmanned Aerial System (latter term includes the entirety of the flying vehicle and the ground-base communications connection connecting the two). Whatever your preferred verbiage is, drones are poised to become a huge global business and the aerial devices are going to have a significant impact across a wide variety of industries.

Historically, the military has been the biggest user/purchaser of drones; The Wall Street Journal estimated that the U.S. military spent about $3 billion on drone programs in 2012. And many aerospace companies continue to develop highly sophisticated machines that are lightweight and easy to assemble/launch.

Columbus, MS-based Stark Aerospace, for instance, recently rolled out ArrowLite™, a small UAS system that supports the U.S. Army Hunter MQ-5B UAS. It weighs less than 7 lbs. and can be assembled and hand-launched in less than 90 seconds.

Looking beyond the military, commercial drones will soon take on much larger roles for businesses and even for individual consumers. BI Intelligence, a research service from Business Insider, estimates that 12% of an estimated $98 billion in cumulative global spending on aerial drones over the next decade will be for commercial purposes. And the San Jose Mercury-News reported that in 2013, there were 15 venture investment deals in drones worth about $79 million. Key players include Andreeson Horowitz (one example – a $10 million investment they made in Airware, which makes software and systems that control drones) and Google Ventures.

“This technology is an extra tool to help an industry be more effective,” said Gretchen West, executive vice president for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). “With precision agriculture, for example, it can take pictures of fields so farmers can identify problems they wouldn’t necessarily see walking through the woods. In law enforcement, you can find a child lost in the woods more easily than walking through a field, particularly if there’s bad weather or treacherous ground”

In fact, AUVSI predicts commercial drones could pump almost $14 billion into the U.S. economy between 2015-2018, and over a 10-year period, create more than 100,000 new jobs, including 34,000 in manufacturing.

But there’s a speed bump right now, at least in the United States. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hasn’t yet legalized commercial drone usage, although it’s expected this will change sometime next year. Meanwhile, West estimates the U.S. is losing $10 billion annually.

“A lot of countries are allowing for flight, and that puts us at a disadvantage,” said West. “We’re seeing U.S. manufacturers realize they’re developing great products they can’t use here, and they’re looking to overseas to fulfill their business model.”

“This market’s going to be huge,” said Ken Loo, a Sunnyvale, CA mechanical engineer who used a 3D printer to create his own UAV. “The possibilities are endless. I know so many people getting into this field now so that they can pounce once the FAA comes up with its rules.”

But it won’t be easy for the FAA. Michael Blades is an analyst with market research firm Frost & Sullivan; he follows the commercial drone market.

“The airspaces in Australia and Brazil, for instance, aren’t nearly as crowded as ours. And the first time one of these unmanned vehicles accidentally takes down a plane, the FAA will be torn apart. So the rule-making process is tricky, because in a way, the sky is a political battleground,” said Blades.

Companies like Google and Amazon aren’t waiting around. Google’s advanced research lab, Google X, announced last week that it’s developing a system of drones to deliver goods. The Wall Street Journal reported that a five-foot wide single-wing prototype from Google’s Project Wing carried supplies including candy bars, dog treats, cattle vaccines, water and radios to two farmers in Queensland, Australia earlier this month. Amazon introduced drone prototypes last year and has asked the FAA for permission to test them in open U.S. airspace; a decision is pending.

The potential commercial uses are endless. Drones have been used in both the U.S. and Canadian real estate markets for more than a year. Vancity Buzz reported that two Vancouver brothers – Jordan and Russ McNab, use a $3,000 ‘quadcopter’ drone to shoot videos of larger homes and mansions to help move properties for their family real estate business. Every time they use the drone, they have to obtain a special flight operations certificate from Transport Canada.

“There are limitations to how high and how close you can fly to things and people,” said Jordan McNab. “For interior shots, we even need to submit a flight plan for the route the quadcopter will take inside a home.”

Some other innovative uses for the aerial devices:

• Last year a team of engineers in California launched the ‘Burrito Bomber,’ a UAV that uses GPS coordinates to drop burritos by parachute;

• David Bird, a professor of wildlife biology at McGill University in Canada, uses a UAV to count birds and polar bears;

• The University of South Dakota is using a drone to capture appealing outdoor shots to help market its Vermillion campus;

• Dave Anderson, who heads up Dana Point, CA-based Captain Dave’s Whale Watching & Dolphin Safari, uses two video-equipped drones to shoot footage of whales and dolphins off the Pacific coast. His first drone video garnered more than eight million YouTube views and has helped boost business.

We’re just on the cusp of seeing this industry explode. Christian Sanz, founder and CEO of drone startup Skycatch summed it up:

“Far from being insidious, airborne peeping toms, drones can be a boon to a host of businesses, from real estate to mining to energy and beyond. They have the potential to add value to our society.”

Last year a student at New York University threw out an interesting challenge – via a Kickstarter campaign, he offered to divulge 60 days worth of private data gleaned from his digital devices.

He raised $2,733 from 213 backers.

And earlier this year, a research team at the University of Trento in Italy reeled in 60 people and their smart phones to participate in an experiment that recorded various personal details and created a marketplace to sell the data. These included phone calls, apps being used, time spent on them, photographs taken, and users’ locations 24/7.

Each week, as reported by MIT Technology Review, the participants took part in an auction to sell the data, e.g., they might want to sell a specific GPS location or total distance traveled, or locations visited on a given day.

While reporting all results could be the topic of another post, in brief, Jacopo Staiano, who headed up the research team, said there were a few key findings:

•  Location is the most valued category of personally identifiable information;
•  Participants valued their information more highly on days that were unusual compared to typical days;
•  People who traveled more each day tended to value their personal information more highly.

Almost 600 ‘auctions’ were conducted among the participants; about $350 worth of Amazon vouchers were given to study participants to reward them for parting with their data.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, other company heavyweights have long collected data on users and monetized this store of information.

In fact, way back in 2011 (light years by tech standards), futurologists at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland noted in a report that our personal data has become a new ‘asset class.’

But by divulging certain bits and bytes of personal data, have we digitally sold our souls to these companies?

Evgeny Morozov, writing in the New Republic, said at the very least, we may have sold our autonomy down the river:

“Once we reveal we are entering this process – via a search query, a slip in an e-mail, some random emotional outburst detected by our smart glasses – our autonomy is hijacked, as the alluring messages that pop up on our smart phones seek to shift us in a direction favorable to advertisers and government bureaucrats obsessed with regulating how we eat, exercise, or consumer energy. What makes the new data-heavy personalized advertising so cunning is that it leaves us with the illusion that we can make autonomous choices,” said Morozov.

There are other obvious implications with geo-targeted ads and localized marketing as many smart phone users probably don’t even realize that their location may be tracked.

One example is London’s public bicycle systems.  Users assume their ride is anonymous.  Not!

James Siddle a London software engineer, wrote on his blog, The Variable Tree, that a publicly available Transport for London dataset contains bicycle journey start/end points.

“What may surprise you is that this record includes unique customer identifiers, as well as the location and date/time for the start and end of each journey… it means that someone who has access to the data can extract and analyze the journeys made by individual cyclists within London during that time, and with a little effort, it’s possible to find the actual people who have made the journeys,” said Siddle.

So if you’re a tech-savvy burglar, you could theoretically time your home break-ins around when you’d know that someone would probably be out and about on their bike.

And this is data that is not even up for sale!

And to circle back as a closer to the NYU student example –  my last three online purchases were $11.75 to 123ehost for a domain name renewal for a Florida home I own; $30.40 to Pharmapacks for 10 bars of Neutrogena facial cleansing bar (original formula), and $115.01 to LD Products for various printer cartridges and other office supplies.

Reckon with that small sampling alone there’s a potential goldmine of different verticals for marketers – real estate, cosmetics/pharmaceuticals, office supplies, computer equipment/accessories, ad nauseum.

At any rate, it’s inevitable that more buyer/seller markets for personal data will emerge online – some legit, others probably somewhat nefarious.

The MIT Technology Review put it in perspective:

“One way or another, we are all going to have to think much more carefully about the value of our personal data, whether we are happy to sell it or not and if so, for how much?”

So what’s your opening bid?

Craft breweries have produced scores of award-winning beers over the years and according to the Houston Chronicle, will garner sales over $7 billion nationwide in 2014. But just having a tasty ale or lager is no guarantee these days for long-term business success as the gigantic ad/marketing budgets of the major breweries can drown out craft breweries attempts to snare market share.

“The number of new craft breweries has exploded in the past few years and the market is getting crowded,” said Melani Gordon, who co-founded San Diego-based TapHunter.  The company provides on- and off-premise accounts with time- and money-saving tools that automatically update beverage inventory on social media channels, websites, and print, digital display, and tablet menus. This exposure empowers their customers by helping transform beer, spirits, and cocktail menus into valuable revenue producers.

Gordon said those craft breweries that don’t put some serious thought behind their brand and voice will struggle.

“There’s no magic formula for craft breweries to find consumers so the new breweries need to build a brand and web presence because it’s challenging today to stand out,” added Gordon.  “In addition, there’s a lot of inefficiencies in the retail distribution model, making it even more difficult for a craft brewery to succeed.”

Craft breweries, added Amber Irwin from Denver-based Cirqle Media (a marketing company that works with numerous craft breweries in the U.S.), are also very regional – some may be very popular in a particular state, but don’t ship much beyond its borders.

So these breweries, which by and large operate on small margins, have to go the extra mile (or kilometer) to stand out, not only via a social media presence, but even in the way they raise funds.

Case in point: Tecumseh Brewing Co., a Michigan craft brewery, launched a crowdfunding campaign last year which was, according to MiBiz, the first startup business to mount an intrastate campaign under the Michigan Invests Locally Exemption (MILE) Act, allowing companies based in the state to solicit investments from Michigan-based investors without having to register with federal securities regulators.

The craft brewery’s crowdfunding campaign, noted MiBiz, was, in essence, structured as a revenue sharing offering – when the brewery opens this fall, 7 percent of sales each month pays back the investors until each receives one and a half times their investment. The brewery notched $175K from the crowdfunding campaign; OSB Community Bank provided a $200K loan; friends and family chipped in another $145K.

Tecumseh Brewing also used its Facebook site to corral potential investors to its solicitation listing on localestake.com.

Crowdfunding, noted Tecumseh General Manager Kyle DeWitt, created opportunities for people to get involved in the brewery’s formation from the gitgo.

“They’ll be our customers, and they’ll also have a stake in the business…if we have 120 investors and 90 or 100 of them are from Tecumseh, that’s 90 or 100 customers we’ll always have,” said DeWitt.

Cirqle Media’s Irwin added that viral marketing is huge for small brewers of fine ales.

“Advertising on social media and mobile platforms is inexpensive and targeted to the people that already love their microbrews.  And beer drinking is a social phenomenon so people share information about their favorite beers and recommend them to their friends,” said Irwin.

Irwin said blogs like the South Florida Beer Blog and Beer Therapy help spread the word about craft beer festivals, new brews, even events at local bars.

Websites like Pintly and TapHunter also help people find places carrying their favorite brews when they head out or go to a different city,” said Irwin.  “Untappd is a mobile optimized site that has a mini-Facebook/Foursquare for beer lovers allowing them to check into a bar and say what beer they’re drinking and then connect with other enthusiasts.”

Beer marketing is very competitive – even cutthroat.  Small brewers simply can’t butt heads against multi-billion dollar companies that have enormous TV ad budgets, hence why social media can be an invaluable tool for craft breweries.  Done properly, it integrates into all other aspects of running a brewery and can yield significant dividends long-term without a large cash outlay up front.

A non-binding opinion handed down earlier this month by the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), the European Union’s highest legal authority, is roiling the business community. While the opinion needs the approval of all 28 EU governments before it can become legally binding, there’s already a lot of online chatter about the potential blowback to businesses operating in the EU.

The case followed complaints in March 2010 from Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a Spanish lawyer, who said that when Google’s search results revealed details on an auction of his repossessed home in a local newspaper (La Vanguardia), it infringed on his privacy rights. CJEU ruled that people have the “right to be forgotten” and can ask Google to remove some sensitive information from Internet search results. Tech companies, noted the Financial Times, fear it may be “the beginning of a broader assault in which Google would be regulated like a utility.” Or to use an oft-used English idiom, it could be “the thin end of the wedge.”

No surprise then that organizations and associations from all walks of life are now weighing with their two bits/bytes. “Individuals may now have the ability to essentially go in with a virtual black marker and redact their names; it will fundamentally change the landscape not only in the field of privacy, but also in the information economy generally,” said Trevor Hughes, president/CEO of the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

And Marc Rotenberg, who heads up the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., added “it’s going to create additional burdens for Google and other companies – but that’s the cost of doing business if your business involves disseminating information.”

So should the opinion become law, businesses set up in an EU country to provide a service must thus ensure that any processing of personal data for a related service targeted to that country conforms to EU data protection laws – even if that processing takes place elsewhere, noted tech law expert Luke Scanlon of Pinsent Masons, a law firm that also publishes Out-Law.com.

“As businesses look to enable their people to ignore borders and are becoming increasingly dependent on people collaborating together wherever they are located, they may now need to review the extent to which services related to personal data processed in one jurisdiction are, in the words of the court, ‘served by’ services that take place in other jurisdictions to fully understand their legal obligations,” said Scanlon.

Scanlon said the court’s interpretation also raises the issue of whether regulators and local member state courts will view the judgment as “applying simply to the activities of search engines or more broadly to other activities of global businesses occurring within EU jurisdictions that are in some way related to data processing activities taking place outside the EU.”

In the U.S. reported Reuters, California recently passed a state ‘eraser’ law that requires tech companies to remove material posted by a minor – if the user requests it. The law goes into effect next year and will probably face a court challenge. If the EU opinion is eventually implemented, it could create major headaches – both technical and financial – for Google, and other tech behemoths like Facebook.

To use an often used metaphor, it’s all a bit of a sticky wicket.

Lev Grossman, writing in Time, said the CJEU opinion has delivered a clear signal – “we don’t necessarily have to accommodate ourselves to technology; we can demand that technology adapt itself to us. The past isn’t what it used to be. But maybe it should be.”

These days if you sneeze funny, it can go viral – and for CEOs, catching cold may be the least of their worries. The myriad social tools available to CEOs can be a mixed bag.

Take Twitter, for instance. There are numerous content opportunities if properly implemented. But there are caveats. As reported by Louis Bedgian in Benzinga, a financial media outlet, CEOs aren’t infallible – and their words can cause financial tremors.

Marlene Morris Towns, a Georgetown University marketing professor, told Bedgian that in many instances, a CEO’s tweets are often distributed in real-time without being vetted.

“They’re not run through legal and compliance which allows you a lot of flexibility to jump on things as they happen – it also holds you at risk,” said Towns.

Towns added that CEOs “step in it themselves sometime by letting their personal views be known when they shouldn’t necessarily be known. Sometimes that’s their fault, sometimes it’s not. Somebody asks them a question in an interview, they say something off the cuff and next thing you know, it’s on social media.”

To wit, a few years ago, Micky Arison, former CEO of Carnival Corporation who also owns the NBA’s Miami Heat, was fined $500,000 by the NBA for a tweet he posted about negotiations between the league and the player’s union.

But Twitter can be a very effective communications tool for CEOs. Arik Hanson, writing in O’Dwyers, spelled out a number of examples of how Twitter can be implemented by CEOs to benefit their company.

Some of these include:

• Share earnings call information
• Recognize employee wins
• Triage customer issues
• Retweet corporate accounts regularly
• Tweet about other business interests
• Tweet your interests
• Retweet other company employees
• Talk about your community
• Tweet about events you speak or attend

While CEOs are slowly integrating Twitter and other social media platforms into their overall communications strategy, the numbers are still quite low. Wired Investor recently reported that only 30% of executive directors within NASDAQ 100 companies are present and active on social networks.

And a 2013 CEO.com/Domo study of social media usage by CEOs at America’s 500 highest growing companies showed that a significant number of CEOs are still invisible on social media sites. While Twitter participation for CEOs increased about 56% in 2013, the percentage of CEOs from these top 500 companies that actually tweet was only 5.6%.

With some companies the business use case for Twitter can be somewhat murky, with no clear correlation between Twitter followers and sales. So going forward, a few takeaways are best summed up by Forbes’ Susan Adams:

“Given the rise of Twitter and the public’s hunger for instantaneous news, CEOs may want to consider diving into the medium. But they should focus on the quality of their posts, in order to attract serious followers.”

So another Game Developers Conference (GDC) has come and gone – 400 panels, roundtable discussions, lectures, tutorials, 350 exhibitors, 20,000+ attendees.  Seems like every gaming publication and industry analyst swooned and fawned over Project Morpheus, Oculus Rift, Valve’s Steam Controller and how virtual reality in general is poised to take over the gaming universe.

What was also interesting, however, were the findings of a survey conducted before GDC opened its doors for the 28^th time last week, a few emerging gaming industry trends, and one rather dopey game that even its developer said “is a small, broken and stupid game” – yet has now garnered literally millions of views.

The second State of the Industry GDC survey polled more than 2,600 North American game developers who attended last year’s conference.  According to GDC, notable trends “include a preference for the PlayStation 4 platform for console developers, the prevalence of self-funded projects and the changing reliance and relationship with publishers.”

The survey indicated that 20 percent of developers intend to release their next game on Sony’s PlayStation 4, slightly edging out Xbox One’s 17 percent.  Developers also want to do their own thing – 64 percent want to self-publish.  And self-funding is still popular among developers – 52 percent said part of their funding is from their company’s existing coffers; 46 percent said they contribute their own money to launch their projects.  About 11 percent used crowdfunding, up from 4 percent in last year’s survey.

And a couple of interesting trends to watch too.   This year we’ll continue to mark the rise of independent game developers.  Digital Trends reported that both Epic Games and Crytek will make their respective development engines available via a subscription model.  Epic’s engine will cost only $19/month and 5 percent gross revenue from any games released; Crytek’s for a $9.90/month flat fee.

“This unprecedented move allows anyone to craft a game with the same tools as the pros, limited only by imagination and dedication,” noted Digital Trends.

And the publication also stated that the free-to-play model for PC games is fast becoming the dominant financial model for PC games.

“Part of the reason for the shift is the globalization of gaming. China, especially, has emerged as one of the biggest gaming markets on the planet, and the majority of revenue created from gaming in China comes from free-to-play PC games,” added Digital Trends.

The standard pricing model won’t disappear overnight, but, noted Digital Trends, “the momentum is definitely shifting, and as it does, the way people play games may shift with it.”

Lastly, one of the silliest – but most popular games at GDC was Goat Simulator, created by Coffee Stain Studios.  Basically, as reported in Ars Technica, “the more mayhem your goat achieves, the more points you get, and a list of objectives keeps players looking for alternate means of mayhem to keep that score ticking higher and higher.”

The studio isn’t exactly helping sales/marketing efforts with this disclaimer (but then again, the self-flagellation may pique interest):

“Goat Simulator was made in a couple of weeks…in fact, you’re better off not expecting anything at all actually. To be completely honest, it would be best if you’d spend your $10 on a hula hoop, a pile of bricks, or maybe a real-life goat.”

Baaaaaaa…

A client recently emailed me that ‘121 meetings might be the sensible approach’ – we were strategizing about holding a press event in advance of a conference.

SMH (‘Shaking My Head’), I wanted to have a bit of fun so SCNR (‘Sorry, Could Not Resist’), I lobbed back a zinger that we should shoot for 122 meetings, figuring AFAICT (‘As Far As I Can Tell’), the client had inadvertently made a typo.

AWK (‘Awkward’). Brain freeze. He meant ‘1 to 1’.

I thought about adding a smiley along with the reply but TBH (‘To Be Honest’), if I see one more emoticon, FMCDH (‘From My Cold Dead Hands’)…you can fill in the rest here.

All of the aforementioned further elucidates what’s finally happened. Internet/text messaging slang has taken over the business world, for better or worse – so, to quote the Borg from Star Trek, ‘resistance is futile.’

AAR (‘At Any Rate’), I started wondering how certain Internet slang, acronyms and text messaging aphorisms have steadily crept into our daily lives. How did this happen?

FWIW (‘For What It’s Worth’), lots of theories abound but here’s a favorite – Harvard sociology professor Steven Shapin noted a few years ago that Internet slang is an interpretation of language that people have found necessary to create in order to confuse the “older” generation.

So, TTBOMK (‘To The Best of My Knowledge’), 2014 will result in even more abbreviated chunks of gibberish as it’s all about the quick and mobile Internet. In fact, Paul Gil, a Canadian project manager/certified computer instructor, came up with an extensive list of hot text/chat expressions being/will be used this year:

COO – Spawned in California, Gill says “COO is a stylish way of saying ‘Cool’ or ‘I definitely approve of this.” Probably created by someone with ADD who couldn’t wait to type in the ‘L’ before moving on to something else.

HMU – Hit Me Up. Used to say ‘contact me,’ ‘text me,’ ‘phone me.’ Gil says it’s a “modern shorthand way to invite a person to communicate with you further.”

IDC – Not the global market research firm but the acronym for ‘I Don’t Care,’
Gil says people use IDC when they’re trying to make a decision with a messaging friend and are open to multiple options.

And while not directly business-related, the following example illustrates just how far language has morphed into symbols and letters that would have even stumped Alan Turing.

BBC News recently asked readers to rewrite some classic texts in txt. Here’s one example from Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

0.5a leag 0.5 a leag
0.5a leag onwrd
All in T valy o Dth
Rd T 600
“^ T LB!
“Chrg 4Tgns” he sd
In2 T valy o Dth
Rd T 600

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred

Keeping up with all the latest online/text lingo is a losing proposition these days as cyberspace/mobile verbiage seems to be expanding faster than the universe.

James Poulos, writing in The Daily Beast, added this cogent admonition:

“It’s enough to make you suspicious that the Internet was designed to create a race of illiterates, communicating through a primitive system of winks, tongue selfies, rap squats and chunked deuces. There’s no doubt now that the Internet has tipped the balance away from continuing our multi-millennial streak as a fundamentally text-based society – in favor of pictures, moving and otherwise,” he noted.

LEmntry, my dEr wtson.

Wearables wearables wearables.

Attendees at CES earlier this month couldn’t avoid them – seems like every other booth was pitching a smart watch or fitness app.

But the real ‘wow’ factor, in my humble opinion, was all the futuristic car technology on display.  Automobiles are quickly evolving into moveable infotainment machines – and many major manufacturers – both foreign and domestic – unveiled prototypes that you may find in your next model quicker than you think.

“Cars will become self-aware where they can understand what’s happening inside and outside,” said Thilo Koslowski, an automotive analyst for market research firm Gartner.  “We’re going to see a self-aware vehicle that looks out for you, controls the information and focuses on providing the right information at the right times to protect, inform and entertain you.”

Taking this even further, Roger Kay, who heads up market research firm Endpoint Technologies, recently wrote in Forbes that perhaps in less than 20 years, drivers will even have an ‘autopilot’ option, particularly on highways.

Kay said decision-making on a busy freeway is easier for a machine than a person, particularly when the machine can coordinate with other machines on the road.

“Traffic flows are better managed by an omniscient driving algorithm when the number of choices is limited: cars must all stay on the highway and move forward.  But the driver will be able to take back control merely by touching the steering wheel, when, for example, he or she is looking for a parking space,” said Kay.

And at CES, we’re just on the cusp seeing how intelligent cars may interact with each other and their drivers.

A few notable examples:

Jerry Garrett reported in the New York Times that Mercedes-Benz rolled out a new wearable interface that lets a smart watch monitor auto functions such as door locks, climate control, tire pressures, even an electric vehicle’s charge rate.

“Another Mercedes system would let a car talk to your house,” said Garrett.  “The interface is with the Nest (recently purchased by Google for $3.2 billion), which can provide remote control of a home’s thermostat and monitoring of the smoke and carbon-monoxide alarms.”

Ford showed off its Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technology which uses 802.11p – a simplified form of Wi-Fi developed specifically for the automotive industry.  According to Chris Ziegler of The Verge, V2V beams small pieces of info between nearby cars.  Ford demonstrated a mode called ‘Where I Am’ that tells other cars your vehicle’s position, direction, speed, and more.

But Ziegler added that V2V is not quite ready for prime time.

“Extremely dense traffic can over-saturate the system, preventing it from working correctly-there are just too many cars in close proximity broadcasting their position at the same time.  Also security and privacy concerns are more prevalent – a hacker spoofing a ‘Here I Am’ signal could cause cars on the road to behave erratically,” said Ziegler.

General Motors also announced it would build an optional 4G/LTE connection in 10 models available mid-year this year; one of these will be the Volt, Chevrolet’s plug-in hybrid.  By 2015, most Chevrolet models will have these connections automatically built in, providing Wi-Fi to people inside their cars. AT&T will provide the connectivity.

All very exciting stuff; in fact, Kay summed up in his Forbes story what the future may portend – and what’s already here. Kay recently interviewed the CTO of Global Connected Consumer, a GM division.  The CTO told Kay that when he was in a hotel in China he couldn’t remember whether he’d locked his car back in Detroit.

“He simply fired up a smart phone app for that, pressed ‘lock’ and received a positive confirmation on his phone a few minutes later.  He locked his car from thousands of miles away – over the Internet,” said Kay.

In one form or another, they’ve been around for centuries.

Infographics- to use a buttoned down definition, are basically an assemblage of data depicted in visual form.

In fact, one of the earliest infographics was created by Christophe Scheiner, a 17th century German priest, physicist and philosopher. In 1630, Scheiner wrote Rosa Ursina (1630), his magnum opus on sunspots. He used infographics to illustrate the sun’s rotation patterns.

Jump-start almost 400 years. In today’s often frenetically paced digital world, infographics have now become yet another important online marketing communications tool, not only for the private sector, but increasingly in the public sector too.

Ai Ching Goh, co-founder of Penang, Malaysia-based Piktochart, which offers both free and fee-based infographic solutions, says teachers and students create about 20 percent of the infographics on Piktochart. She added the company recently surpassed 600,000 users worldwide.

According to David Jenyns, founder of MelbourneSEOServices.com, a Melbourne, Australia SEO consultancy, while the technology to create infographics hasn’t changed dramatically over the past 12-24 months, what has accelerated its growth/usage is the speed in which infographics is shared.

“Services like Slideshare and Pinterest are encouraging more people to use infographics; clients are finding that infographics are especially good for various types of surveys to illustrate key findings,” said Jenyns.

“We are also seeing more and more animated infographics which essentially are huge animated GIF files as well as interactive and video infographics,” added David Wallace, who edits Infographic Journal, an infographics blog that is also a project of SearchRank, an Arizona search and social media marketing company.

And Amy Balliett, co-founder of Seattle-based Killer Infographics, said their firm’s private sector clients primarily use infographics to grow brand or product awareness or to showcase themselves as industry thought leaders.

Measuring ROI for infographics is also becoming easier to quantify.

“A lot of bloggers will repost an infographic using simple embed code provided with the infographic itself,” said Balliett. “That code will include an anchor link back to the original host of the infographic, which helps to grow inbound links quickly.”

But Balliett noted that ROI also depends on the project’s goals – if a client wanted to grow their social following, it might necessitate creating a humorous infographic that would play well in social media. If a client wants backlinks from industry sites, then a thought leadership infographic would be more appropriate.

“Marketers have to come to the table with a well-executed infographic to get any traction and then measure success based on the infographic’s goal,” she said.

In addition, Wallace said you can measure how many social shares occur in the two to three week timeframe that they are published.

“You can also monitor new inbound links the infographic generates. And finally, you can look at analytics to see what kind of traffic they generate and more importantly, what that traffic does after landing on the infographic page,” said Wallace.

Balliett added that one of her company’s most successful infographics was for an online educational lead generation company that wanted to build links for their IT schools’ website. Called ‘Geek versus Nerd,’ Balliett said the infographic generated more than 3,000 reposts on key targeted sites like Geek Tyrant, Search Engine Journal and Wired.

“The client received more than 200 backlinks from these posts and to date, the infographic has gotten more than 10,000 tweets, stumbles and Facebook shares independently,” said Balliett.

And a recent example of how a non-profit organization utilized infographics to drum up some publicity was a Piktochart-generated infographic for YES Scotland. Stewart Kirkpatrick, whose title there is Head of Digital, said his organization wanted to convey a lot of complex information in a graphic that would be both engaging and easy on the eye. The infographic has been viewed widely on the YES Scotland Facebook page.

As 2014 looms, look for infographics to continue to grow in popularity, even though, noted Balliett, costs for infographics have actually increased – it has nothing to do with technology as the tech improvements the past few years haven’t made design any faster.

“With thousands of infographics going online every day, it’s essential that brands release infographics with high quality design and research to see any success – and to get this kind of quality, brands have to pay for experts,” said Balliett.

And it’s the sharing element that really adds value, noted Jenyns.

“If someone creates an infographic that’s interesting enough that the viewer wants to share it, it will create a ‘viral’ effect and that’s brilliant marketing.”