Wendy’s, the fast-food chain, is teaming up with Google to automate its drive-through ordering system with AI-driven chatbots. “The goal is to streamline the ordering process and prevent long lines in the drive-through lanes from turning customers away,” Wendy’s CEO Todd Penegor told the Wall Street Journal.
Continue reading “The Future of Fast Food”
I have been a big champion for Substack and what they were trying to enable — an opportunity for independent writers to make a living from their work. I even considered setting up an email newsletter on their platform. It has a nice interface, a nice editor, and the price — it is free versus the exorbitant prices charged by Mailchimp and its peers. I am not so sure anymore — for the company searching for growth seems to have transformed into a quasi-spammer.
Continue reading “Substack Spam”A good teacher is less of a teacher and more of a mentor. She always teaches you by asking the right questions that help you learn about yourself. And then improve from that point forward. You need to trust your teacher and believe you share a common interest to get there. It begins with acknowledging … Continue reading A Good Teacher
My Spring Break was longer than I had expected. I didn’t realize how much of a break I needed from the constant stream of information that made up my day. And that is after I had already eliminated Facebook and Instagram from my life. Since then, I have slashed my daily Twitter usage drastically — I mean, who has the extra cycles to deal with re-hashed ideas as Twitter threads, pointless arguments, and media people complaining about Twitter — on Twitter.
Continue reading “Just A Little Longer”
After many go-go years, fixed broadband growth seems to slow, especially in more mature markets. Sure, parts of Asia and Africa still show strong growth, but the overall trend doesn’t look good, according to PointTopic Research. The global broadband demand for 2022 saw the total connections grow to 1.362 billion — still up 6.65 percent from 1.277 billion in 2021. “Global fixed broadband subscriber growth was the second slowest in the last four quarters and stood at 1.43%,” the report notes.
Even though I was mostly offline, I did up tweeting occasionally this past week. In a typical week, these would have become a proper blog post. Nevertheless, here they are!
In today’s written-word landscape, there is room for a couple of giant, sprawling news organizations, which most people are willing to pay for; room for practical, service-based journalism, like trades, which can be expensed or written off; and room for really excellent reporting that’s entertaining and insightful, too—work that makes you smarter and that you … Continue reading This is the future of media
Music streaming saw a 22.6% growth in 2022, making it clear for once and all that we live in a streaming world. A new stat only reinforces that reality. For the first time, on-demand audio streams crossed the one trillion mark on March 23rd, 2023. According to a report from research firm, Luminate, “global music … Continue reading A trillion streams!
I read a summary of a research report that was somewhat shocking in its conclusions. Millennials, aka 25-34-year-olds who grew up amid the transition from physical music to streaming, surprisingly, spend the least time streaming music of any segment under 45, this report by MIDIA Research notes. I would be the first one to admit, … Continue reading Wait what? Even millennials don’t like algorithms
Last week, when reading Ben Smith’s newsletter, I came across a graphic based on a poll conducted by MuckRack. It showed that media folks weren’t pulling back from Twitter despite much handwriting and mock outrage, just as they didn’t move away from Facebook. The switch to Mastadon made for a grand narrative, but like most … Continue reading Why Media Can’t Quit Twitter
