Around the Office: Oversharing Habits, Rethinking Remixes, & Google’s Noteworthy New Service

Teaching Teens to Respect Their Own Privacy

The emergence of social media, video, texts, audio, email and documents have contributed to a veritable explosion of Big Data. And while there’s no doubt it’s changing the landscape of marketing and giving us valuable customer insights and growth opportunities, Caroline is among a growing number of people concerned that teens may not know the repercussions of sharing online. Many teens have grown up with the Internet as a place for entertainment, information and communication, and also to vent and express themselves in ways they never would in real life. We have a duty to inform the young about their privacy rights for their safety – even though it could make our Big Data slightly smaller.

The Originality of Remixes

A fan of remixes and mashups of different media, David was excited about a new exhibition showing the work of artists who use digital remixing strategies to create new works. And while these works are sometimes seen as nothing more than copying and pasting the work of others, most artists would say that nothing’s entirely new and that every great work of art is indebted to those that came before. In an increasingly digital culture, where it’s easier to create new things by downloading and remixing, perhaps remixing won’t be seen as derivative but as re-appropriation, recycling, re-contextualization, and even a tribute to (more) original works. And perhaps we all do it.

A First Look at Google Keep

Roberto and Andy were keen to take note of Google’s new cloud service, Google Keep, which is designed to help people keep track of their information and stay organized across their computer, tablet and phone. The overwhelming pace of new knowledge on the Internet has saw the success of virtual notebook services such as Evernote that let you jot down ideas and create lists. However, we remained a little underwhelmed after our first peek at Google Keep since it lacks (as a blogger Alex Chitu noted) organizational features such as labels, comments, multiple notebooks, rich-text editing, and sharing. It will be interesting to see if Google can keep up with the competition.