Good Monday morning. It’s September 21st. Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day. Our friends at Clean Air Moms Action have a great resource for voting and volunteering this year.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,418 words — about a 5 minute read. 

1. News to Know Now

a.  Citing a lawsuit regarding First Amendment concerns, a judge has temporarily blocked an order that would have prevented new downloads of the app We Chat. Meanwhile President Trump told reporters Saturday that a business deal between TikTok owner Byte Dance, Oracle Corp., and Walmart “has his blessing” although it was not immediately clear which clause in the Constitution describes the process for an executive branch blessing by the president.

b. Political activity online continues to highlight a sharply divided electorate. This week privately held outdoor retailer Patagonia acknowledged that the tag on the company’s shorts has the phrase “Vote the Assholes Out” stitched on the reverse side. Meanwhile Twitter, often criticized for allowing President Trump to violate the company’s online standards, removed a tweet by Kanye West that provided an editor’s phone number and asked his followers to call “a white supremacist”. Facebook joined Twitter in suspending and removing accounts made by teenagers who were paid by Turning Point Action to amplify conservative political messages.

c.  California has enacted the Genetic Privacy Information Act following a similar law passed last year by Florida. The law requires consumer DNA testing companies like 23 and Me and Ancestry to receive a consumer’s permission before disclosing DNA information to third parties including insurance companies and law enforcement agencies.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Covid Tracking Project — useful for its annotations
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations — the gold standard
COVID-19 Forecast Hub — Collects multiple models
Google Mobility Reports — county level info on people locations
Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News
5 Things COVID-19 Experts Get Wrong About Stats – The Next Web
Hologram Teaching Tech Launching in Response To COVID – CBS 21 DFW
In South Korea, COVID-19 Comes With Online Bullies Risk – NY Times
Internet Search Results Predict Hotspots Weeks Later – Science Alert
Lack of Internet Access Has Become Critical For Students – MSN
Senior Living Tech Spending Skyrockets Amid COVID-19 – Senior Housing
Smart Thermometer Company Kinsa Predicts Local Surge – Springfield News

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Those domain names that seem awfully explicit and chock-full of keywords are called exact-match domains. Google says they’re unnecessary for success. Google exec John Mueller offered that guidance during a recent Ask Google Webmasters video. That’s consistent with years of Google messaging and directly contradicts some SEO software and studies that suggest otherwise. 

Google is also continuing to roll out its green checkmark to local businesses in home service categories. Those badges are earned in the Google Guaranteed and Google Screened programs. The latter program is available for attorneys, financial planners, real estate agents, and tax specialists. Search Engine Land’s Justin Sanger has nice coverage here.

Google My Business listings, a mainstay of the home services and professional industry, now offers video conferencing integration via Google Meet, Webex, Skype, and Zoom. There are details at Search Engine Roundtable.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Amazon Grocery

The quaint days when Amazon purchased Whole Foods and threatened to disrupt food retail are over. It’s done. Amazon is an important component of e-commerce infrastructure and is even labeling its own private food products across ten different brands including Wag for pets, Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime for snacks, and Mama Bear for child products. 

Last week, the company opened its first Amazon Fresh grocery store in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills neighborhood. The latest store opening incorporates elements of the company’s automated Go stores, Whole Foods’ focus on experience and quality, and the company’s Dash Carts and ubiquitous Alexa assistant.

Amazon also has a separate delivery service also called Amazon Fresh that directly competes with other online grocers such as Walmart, Target, and Peapod. Its Amazon Prime Now service still offers grocery delivery in some areas within one hour for an $8 fee or fee-free in two hours. 

Amazon’s grocery retail empire spreads through North America, Europe, and Asia. There are nearly 30 Amazon Go stores with pre-pandemic planning calling for 3,000 stores by 2021. Amazon Go is also testing a larger footprint location, this time in Redmond, Washington, home to Microsoft’s global headquarters. There are still 500 Whole Food Markets serving upscale areas. Online shoppers can also simultaneously shop at Amazon Prime and Whole Foods at the company’s separate Amazon Prime Now website and app.

The explosion into grocery from 2017’s purchase of Whole Foods mirrors Jeff Bezos’ “Get Big Fast” mantra. Now under pressure from Walmart Plus, Amazon announced last week that it will open 1,000 small delivery hubs throughout the U.S. A rumored takeover of sites housing J.C. Penney and other bankrupt department store chains appears to be on hold because they are frequently on multiple levels and would need extensive remodeling to be delivery hubs.

The company is growing big fast in yet another sector by disrupting an established industry with technology. That strategy worked more than twenty-five years ago when Bezos launched “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore” and shows no signs of abating now. The video below shows how Amazon sees its blending of technology in a familiar yet different supermarket setting.

What’s next? Amazon and Walmart are racing to see who can scale up drone delivery. Both have real world testing going on, including Walmart delivering groceries via drone in Fayetteville, NC, home of Fort Bragg. 

Smartlinks

Amazon Fresh Grocery Store Opens — Retail Wire
Amazon Fresh Now Open to Everyone — Amazon.com
Amazon Opens First Cashierless Grocery Store — TechCrunch
Amazon Opens New Go Grocery in Microsoft’s Neighborhood — Geek Wire
Amazon Plans to Open 1,000 Warehouses — Bloomberg
Private Label Retailer of the Year — Grocery Dive
Walmart Now Piloting On-Demand Drone Delivery — Walmart

5. Following Up: Criminal Databases

We wrote extensively last week about the pitfalls in current law enforcement technology. Slate has an excellent followup for you to consider about racial and other disparities found in criminal databases. 

The NYPD’s gang database is 99% Black and Latinx.

6. Debugging: Spot the Troll Quiz

This is a great quiz put together from real social media content assembled at Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub. Your job is to guess whether the poster was a legitimate account or from a troll farm.

Most industry folks seem to get 5 or 6 correct.  Can you do better?

7. ProTip: How to Automate Transcription

Note taking is so old school. The nice Lifehacker folks have posted a primer on how to use Google Docs or Microsoft Word to transcribe your next meeting.

Google’s version is free to boot!

8. Spotlighters Ask:  Wikibuy

Remember: press reply and email a question about integrating the online world into your life. We research and answer them all. We also publish one each week.

Do you use Wikibuy? I was wondering if it’s legit?

I don’t use the service, but it’s legit in that it is not two Romanian guys in a warehouse somewhere who are trying to get your information. Capital One bought them a couple of years ago. There is a similar browser extension called Honey that is owned by Paypal. 

The strategy for Cap One and Paypal is to insert themselves into the ecommerce process. Services like these can save you money, but the savings may not be huge, and you may not have an account with the company offering the cheaper price. And don’t forget that you’re likely sharing your data with the service provider too.

Screening Room: Panera Meets Bolton

10. Coffee Break: Sandwich Optimization

“I set out to work on something completely meaningless,” wrote data scientist Ethan Rosenthal who created an algorithm to optimize the placement of banana slices on the PB & Banana sandwiches his grandfather introduced to him. Take a picture of your ingredients and the algo does the same for you.

He succeeded in meaningless AND optimization.

Good Monday morning. It’s September 14th. Rosh Hashana begins at sundown local time on Friday and ends Sunday. Yom Kippur begins the following Sunday.

Spotlight has a new feature called “Spotlighters Ask” that you’ll find below. We always get questions about the internet, technology, and how businesses and nonprofits can thrive in this environment. We’ll share your smart questions and the answers with all Spotlight readers. You can ask a question at any time by replying to this email. You’ll get an answer like always and you may see your question in a future issue, but we’ll never share your name.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,946 words — about a 7 minute read. We were off last week. We’ll be back to five minute reads next week.

Breaking Sunday night: Oracle Corp. will become TikTok’s “technology partner” according to The Wall Street Journal. We expect more clarity from Byte Dance and Oracle on Monday. The transaction was announced one hour after Microsoft’s bid was rejected.

1. News to Know Now

a.  Facebook removed the pages of far-right group Patriot Prayer. Despite its name the group has been linked to The Proud Boys, a hate group. At least two members of Patriot Prayer threatened people in Portland including Mayor Ted Wheeler. Facebook also announced that it removed U.S., Russia, and Pakistan based networks of pages targeting people outside their respective  countries, including a Russian disinformation campaign against the U.S.

b. President Trump also posted disinformation Friday on Twitter that the network labeled as “specifically encouraging people to vote twice.” The North Carolina Board of Elections specifically asked voters not to follow the president’s recommendations because doing so could result in a felony charge. Voting twice is illegal in all states and is a felony in twenty-eight.

Earlier in the week the president complained on Twitter that a private user with 266 followers had posted an image of the satirical “Moscow Mitch” image showing the head of Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) poorly edited into a Russian soldier’s overcoat.  The contrast is important because the president and his advisors have posted manipulated videos of political opponents allegedly saying things that they didn’t or inaccurately portraying them as asleep or intoxicated. 

c.  Amazon Alexa has some nifty new commands including “Call for help” and allowing you to pay for gas by voice at Exxon and Mobil gas stations. Alexa can also now print by voice, and Lifehacker shows you how to set that up.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Covid Tracking Project — useful for its annotations
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations — the gold standard
COVID-19 Forecast Hub — Collects multiple models
Google Mobility Reports — county level info on people locations

NEW: Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News
Amazon customers face price gouging — CBS News
Google and Apple change tactics on contact tracing tech — Wired
Googling for gut symptoms predicts Covid hot spots — Bloomberg
Schools are buying surveillance to fight COVID-19 — The Markup
These states have the biggest decreases in internet speed — PC Mag

3. Search Engine Optimization News

The impending election is causing Google to act on privacy in much the same way as Facebook. They recently announced that they will not share with advertisers some of the words that trigger the ads they paid for. Microsoft search and advertising executive Christi Olson called the move “ludicrous” according to Search Engine Journal. I added a word in front of the word ‘ludicrous’ and am reliably informed by my wife that the word I chose should not be yelled with the windows open. That may be so, but it was the correct word.

Background: Advertisers can access a “search query report” that has many uses. Among the things we do with it is show our clients the actual words and spellings that customers use to find them. And once upon a time, Google reported on any query that resulted in a click to a website, not just the advertising clicks. It’s been nearly ten years since Google did that, and I’m still complaining. 

A big problem: the data is used to refine the advertising, to make it more efficient, less expensive, and not just for intelligence gathering. 

Google also announced that its autocomplete function will not include candidate names, political parties, or voting terms. You can still search for all of those terms, but Google will no longer use predictive text to guess what you’re searching for. The company did something similar with COVID-19 and acknowledged in an interview with Ad Week that it was too restrictive when it originally blocked ads from appearing next to terms related to the novel coronavirus. 

Google will also allow all organizations to update their Google My Business listings with health and safety attributes such as “masks required” or “temperature check required.” See Search Engine Roundtable for details. 

4. Also in the Spotlight — Law Enforcement Technology

Last summer we told you how the military and police were using technology including facial recognition, advanced databases, social media, and even consumer cameras like Amazon Ring. This law enforcement technology update covers newer concepts in vogue like geofencing and predictive analytics.

Portland, Oregon, made news again last week for banning the use of facial recognition in city agencies and privately owned businesses including stores, banks, restaurants, and even transit stations. The legislation also grants consumers the right to sue for damages. The legislation took effect immediately, and city officials reported that local police are not using facial recognition or biometrics. 

This ban occurs after San Francisco’s ban just over one year ago. Oakland and Boston have also banned use of this law enforcement technology. 

Police are also relying on geofence warrants that compel a company like Google or Apple to provide the identity of anyone who was at a specific location during a specific time. But in the same way that a red light camera only detects a vehicle breaking a law, a geofence warrant only identifies that a phone or other mobile device was present.

Arizona resident Jorge Molina was arrested for murder and told by a detective “we knew, one hundred percent, without a doubt that [your] phone was at the shooting scene.” Unfortunately for Molina, an old phone of his that he had lent to someone was at the scene. Police reportedly ignored that Molina’s location was reported on two devices in different locations and that the car registered in his name had multiple drivers. Molina spent six days in jail, was fired from his job,  and even lost his car.

Law enforcement technology also contributed to the arrest of Robert Julian-Borchak Williams in Michigan. Williams was handcuffed in front of his wife and children eight months ago. Detectives investigating $3,800 in shoplifted watches from a boutique wrongly identified Williams using a facial recognition algorithm. Williams’ arrest followed a similar arrest by Detroit police of Michael Oliver for felony larceny. Four months later, Oliver was finally exonerated. 

An even more egregious use of law enforcement technology is currently being used by the Pasco County (FL) Sheriff. A Tampa Bay Times expose reported that residents in the 1.2 million person county are subject to interrogation from a “predictive algorithm” that identifies them as “likely to break the law.” You win a prize if you think that sounds exactly like the plot of Tom Cruise’s 2002 science fiction thriller “Minority Report,” but it’s really happening in this county north of Tampa.

At least ten percent of those identified by the algorithm are children. One fifteen year old was arrested for sneaking into carports with a friend and stealing mopeds. Already under the supervision of a juvenile probation officer, deputies went to his home at least twenty-one times in a five month period to question him and his family. They also visited his mother at work, went to a friend’s house, and checked his gym.

Californians will vote on Proposition 25 this November. Its passage would require judges to use a similar system to Pasco County’s when deciding whether to grant noncash bail. One study estimates that one-third of jurisdictions already use these types of predictive systems in pretrial environments.

Law Enforcement Technology Smartlinks

Avondale man sues after Google data leads to arrest — Phoenix New Times
Calif. bill would mandate crime prediction algorithms — Motherboard
Creepy geofence finds anyone near a crime scene — Wired
Facial recognition software tallies second wrongful arrest — State Scoop
Google geofence warrants face a major legal challenge — One Zero
More cities saying no to facial recognition — CNN
Portland passes groundbreaking ban on facial recognition — One Zero
Targeted — The Tampa Bay Times
Wrongfully accused by an algorithm — The New York Times

5. Following Up: GPT-3 AI & Walmart’s Prime

We told you in mid-August about GPT-3, the Open AI algorithm that uses machine learning to process language in ways that weren’t commercially available before. Now you can read some of GPT-3’s longer prose in The Guardian’s op-ed “A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?”

And we told you in the same issue that Walmart had delayed its Amazon Prime competitor. That changes tomorrow with the launch of Walmart+, a $98 annual service that gives users a 5 cent per gallon fuel discount, an app to allow them to check out of Walmart stores without going through a cashier, and provides free delivery for online orders of at least $35. Get details at Yahoo Finance.

6. Debugging: Victoria’s Secret & Bra Tracking

A silly TikTok video claimed that ordinary RFID tags found in bras sold at Victoria’s Secret were used to track people. Faster than you could say, “Oh, you goofballs …” it quickly morphed into more than one dozen YouTube videos that refer to the theft deterrent devices as “sex trafficking tags.”

I just think that more people need better hobbies. Go read the rest at Fast Company.

7. ProTip: How to Check for Stalkerware

Assuming your bra is clear of sex trafficking tags, you still want to lock down your privacy from stalkerware. This fantastic Wired article explains how to secure your phone, PC, and online accounts.

8. Spotlighters Ask: Facebook Political Study

I got an invitation to be involved in a Facebook political study. My friend got one too and has an offer to go offline for compensation. Is this really legit?

Yes, it really is legit. 

Researchers from UT Austin and NYU are working with Facebook and have tabbed researchers at 15 other schools for “rigorous peer-reviewed research” about how social media generally and Facebook specifically affects democracy and voting. The other schools include Stanford, Princeton, UNC, and George Washington.

Facebook is allowed to have transparency into the data and findings, but has no editorial control. The program is under the auspices of former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg who was hired in late 2018 as Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs.

Clegg’s announcement of the initiative is here.

8. Spotlighters Ask: Facebook Political Study

I got an invitation to be involved in a Facebook political study. My friend got one too and has an offer to go offline for compensation. Is this really legit?

Yes, it really is legit. 

Researchers from UT Austin and NYU are working with Facebook and have tabbed researchers at 15 other schools for “rigorous peer-reviewed research” about how social media generally and Facebook specifically affects democracy and voting. The other schools include Stanford, Princeton, UNC, and George Washington.

Facebook is allowed to have transparency into the data and findings, but has no editorial control. The program is under the auspices of former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who was hired in late 2018 as Facebook’s Vice President of Global Affairs.

Clegg’s announcement of the initiative is here.

Screening Room: Ikea

Ikea’s GUNRID air purifying curtains are made from recycled plastic bottles. Here’s a whimsical look at their potential journey from a spot that just launched in Asia.

10. Coffee Break: Blade Runner in SF

Every creative person on the west coast is taking photos and videos of the weird colors caused by wildfires. After one person posted drone footage of San Francisco, another creative type overlaid music from Blade Runner 2049 because that’s our world now.

Here are three ways that we can help you:

1. Get a free SEO audit on our website.

2.  Have a simple, fact-based question about digital marketing? Reply & ask George for free.

3. If your organization needs help with search, social media, or advertising, have a look at what we do.

Good Monday morning. It’s August 31st. Wednesday is the 75th anniversary of American and Japanese leaders meeting to sign the papers ending World War II aboard the USS Missouri docked in Tokyo Bay. There are still veterans of that war alive today. Here is more info at the History Channel.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,675 words, about a 6 minute read. That will have to tide you over for a while because we’re off next week for Labor Day.

Breaking Sunday: Twitter removed a post retweeted by President Donald Trump that contained inaccurate information about coronavirus death statistics. The original post was made by a QAnon conspiracy theorist and then amplified by the president.

The information inaccurately quoted CDC information. Later in the day, the Trump campaign tweeted the link to an article with the inaccurate information, and that had not yet been removed by Sunday evening.

1. News to Know Now

a.  Apple and Facebook’s fight over online privacy in the new iOS spilled into public last week.  Short version: every iOS and Android device has a unique id number. That number allows individual users to be tracked for everything from law enforcement to advertising. Apple’s next operating system will be released this fall and block that ability. In a public post, Facebook said the move will hurt small developers and cut Facebook’s revenue by $500 million. Apple countered with their own post doubling down on user privacy.

Apple is also being assailed by Fortnite software developer Epic which sued Apple over the company’s 30 percent commission charged on in-app sales after the companies publicly fought for weeks. Apple launched another salvo in the war on Friday when it terminated Epic’s software developer license, effectively removing all of its products from the App Store.

Worth noting is that Epic created a scathing parody of Apple’s sacred “1984” commercial two weeks ago. The parody is based on a Ridley Scott directed commercial often referred to as one of advertising’s most significant creative pieces. Epic reimagined the spot as Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite.

b. Amazon announced a new wellness product called Halo that is a wearable band and companion app. Halo monitors heart rate, steps walked, body fat percentage, and the user’s mood by analyzing their voice. The data for those last two measurements come from photos that users take with the app and from recording a user’s voice. Priced at $100, Halo has a continuing $3.99 monthly charge. Here is the Amazon announcement.

c.Google and Facebook blocking functions that allowed targeting advertisements by race, marital status, gender, age, and other protected demographics are beginning to reach the market. Last week I confirmed that Facebook political ads can no longer be targeted by race. Meanwhile, Google said that its prohibitions on this data targeting housing, employment, and credit ads will be in effect on October 19. While it is already illegal to selectively advertise for employment using age and other criteria, it was possible to do so using the online consoles at both companies.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Covid Tracking Project — useful for its annotations
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations — the gold standard
COVID-19 Forecast Hub – Collects multiple models

NEW: Google Mobility Reports – county level info on people locations in broad categories like businesses, parks, and grocery stores

Tech News
Boston Library branches offer internet outdoors – Mass Live
Calif makes tablets available to nearly 1 million children – EdSource
Closing the digital divide is more critical than ever – CNET podcast
College students are scrambling for housing, Wi-Fi – USA Today
Doctors battle another scourge: misinformation – NY Times
How WeChat Censored the Coronavirus Pandemic – Wired
Online child predators more dangerous during pandemic – NJ.com
Your tween has been on this gaming site – NY Times

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Google My Business continues to be a prime source for the company to help fuel search requests related to local businesses. The average profile includes a lot of data according to reporting by Search Engine Land.

• 73 reviews averaging 4.1 stars
• 45 photos
• 5 posts

Two studies suggest that one-third to one-half of businesses do not maintain their GMB profile.

We’ve also learned a lot lately from Google about how it views links to and from your website. Google exec John Mueller shared that website managers should ” … focus on the basics instead of worrying about [links] … Make a better site … Links are definitely not the most important SEO factor.” 

When asked if links were important, just not the most important factor, he responded, “We use lots of factors with it comes to search crawling, indexing, and ranking.”

Muller was even more specific last week, writing on Reddit, “Randomly dropping a link into Wikipedia has no SEO value and will do nothing for your site. All you’re doing is creating extra work for the Wikipedia maintainers who will remove your link drops. It’s a waste of your time and theirs. Do something that’s useful in the long term for your site instead, build something of persistent value.” 

Finally, Mueller weighed in on the use of keywords in an URL, writing on Twitter that “the SEO effect … is minimal once the content is indexed.” That important caveat jibes with what we know about Google using cues on a website page to determine or confirm the page’s topic.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Facebook Moderation

Facebook is facing inner turmoil and external criticism after a companywide meeting on Thursday. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the company’s failure to remove a group calling itself “Kenosha Guard” posted a “call to arms” that remained visible even after two protesters were killed in Kenosha Tuesday night.

The timing was especially bad for Facebook, which had published a detailed data science paper on Tuesday, explaining how it would use its data to help guard against fakes and misinformation. Called the TIES system, Facebook believes that it will help detect some of the millions of fake accounts and their activity by using machine learning to detect trends beyond the capability of human analysts. 

One week earlier, Facebook removed 790 QAnon groups and 10,000 accounts to fight conspiracy theory misinformation on its Facebook and Instagram sites as well as top apps Messenger and WhatsApp. 

The action seemed big but came weeks after an op-ed by influential digital writer Abby Ohlheiser, now a senior editor at MIT Technology Review,” wrote that “Twitter and Facebook won’t be able to deal with the “omniconspiracy” without “rethinking the entire information ecosystem.” Ohlheiser quoted anonymous sources that tipped her off to Facebook’s similar ban weeks later.

Facebook and Twitter aren’t alone, and QAnon isn’t their only problem requiring constant content moderation. Online sites face a blizzard of pornography, violence including streamed suicides and murders, and hate speech. Anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. filed a lawsuit last week arguing that Facebook didn’t have the right to fact check its information.

And then there is outright disinformation, the act of deliberately using misinformation, plaguing all sites. NBC News reported last week that Twitter stopped a spam operation that pushed messages from fake accounts about Black people abandoning the Democratic Party.

Smartlinks
Anti-Vaxxers Are Suing Facebook: Fact-Checking is “Censorship” — Gizmodo
Facebook chose not to act on militia complaints — The Verge
Facebook employees outraged — BuzzFeed News
Facebook System for Detecting Fakes & Misinformation — Social Media Today
Facebook Removes 790 QAnon Groups to Fight Conspiracy Theory — NY Times
It’s too late to stop QAnon with fact checks & account bans — MIT Tech Review
Leveraging online social interactions for enhancing integrity — Facebook
Viral pro-Trump tweets by fake African American spam accounts — NBC

5. Following Up: TikTok 

We’ve been writing about TikTok every week because it’s important and has millions of U.S. users. We thought the biggest news of the week was Walmart potentially working with Microsoft to acquire the U.S. operations of the company. That was until Sunday afternoon when China announced that TikTok owner ByteDance will require Chinese government approval to sell any assets.

Here is Bloomberg’s coverage of the tech company as proxy cold war.

6. Debugging: Fake Meme about Police Injuries

A meme purportedly showing four different Seattle and Portland police officers injured with bloody uniforms and dazed expressions actually shows police from four different incidents in Australia dating back as long as fourteen years ago.

The Associated Press has a fact check.

7. ProTip: See AR Museum Exhibits on Google

The Google Arts & Culture app includes lots of neat augmented reality museum content, which is awfully convenient during a pandemic. 

TNW shows you how to use the app on your phone.

8. Great Data: Animate a Shocking Data Point

You know that the best way to tell a story is to engage as many senses as possible. You might think that’s hard to do online, but check out this animation of global temperature trends from data scientist Bob Gregory. The smooth cadence in the initial data leads to a shocking conclusion that is then held as the final frame in another color. 

Elevate your storytelling to a wow level.

Screening Room: Amazon Web Services

10. Coffee Break:  The Great Pea Debate

Guerrilla marketing is beautiful when it works. Kraft used a simple ASCII drawing and, erm, controversial opinion, to spark conversation about its brand. I noticed it online as people argued for one side or another so I began copying it to casual groups. The same thing happened, sometimes at a very passionate level. But almost no one said, “I hate this brand or this food.” 

The tweet reinforced nostalgic feelings about the brand. You can do the same thing. Try it this week.

“Mark Zuckerberg” by Alessio Jacona is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0