Privacy browsers catching a wave
The public is increasingly weary of sharing personal information with the tech giants. Privacy browsers generally don’t allow cookies and provide information on what data is being requested of the user. Wired suggests six privacy browsers or plug-ins to your existing desktop browser that maintain your anonymity, to varying degrees: DuckDuckGo, Ghostery, TOR Browser, Brave, Firefox, Safari.
dis-rup-shun: Thanks to Russia and to Facebook, consumer awareness of personal information sharing is at an all time high. Apple is using privacy as a differentiator, seeking to further engender audiences and shame Google and Facebook for their aggressive harvesting of personal information. The campaign appears to be working. If our society moves to reduce the amount of data we allow tech giants to collect, will we be happy when free services become limited or require payment since maintaining our privacy renders advertising to be less effective?
Willo is going to change the way you clean your mouth
Startup Willo has raised $7.5 million from Kleiner Perkins to revolutionize the way you clean your mouth, claiming that the brush is an inferior solution that only cleans 46% of dental plaque. Details are not available, but the picture offered shows a different approach to dental hygiene. TechCrunch
dis-rup-shun: It is likely that this toothbrush replacement will collect data on our brushing habits and offer weekly emails to rate our dental care performance, because that is what every connected device seems to do, despite the fact that most of us aren’t that interested. What will be helpful, however, is to displace the annoying task of spending an hour with a dental hygienist twice a year. That value proposition will be well received.
Samsung Fold foldable phone ship dates undetermined
TechCrunch reports that AT&T and BestBuy have cancelled early orders of Samsung’s huge, foldable, $2000 phone that was originally scheduled for release on April 26th.
dis-rup-shun: The foldable phone will be a big hit among those that are willing to pay $2000 to have something no on else has. Having a device the size of a small tablet that will fit in a pocket will be great for travel, and if Samsung is able to add its latest Galaxy photo technology, it will be an amazing way to share digital photography.
Highlights from E3 gaming conference
E3 is the biggest gaming industry conference in existence, and 2019’s event just ended. Here are some highlights:
Microsoft’s next Xbox console will launch for holiday 2020 and will feature 8K games and 120 frames per second. It will be backwards compatible with prior generations, if anyone really wanted to play yesterday’s games.
Steaming services are coming. Physical disks are going the way of the Bluray movie disk…unwanted. A large number of streaming services are vying to do for gaming what Netflix did for movie watchers.
dis-rup-shun: The big three console makers have had an effective lock on the gaming space, but that’s about to change when premium content can be streamed to any connected device. Tether a Bluetooth game controller that is not limited to a console architecture to your iPad, smartphone, PC or smart TV, and high performance gaming breaks its traditional bounds. The Verge