Flood Of Marketing Emails Coming From Amazon

Amazon is going to allow third-party sellers and brands to run personalized email marketing campaigns targeting existing customers.

Buying from an Amazon third-party seller or brand may soon see you automatically signed up to a personalized email marketing campaign.

Amazon is launching a free new feature for sellers and brands it calls "Tailored Audiences," which was announced during the Amazon Accelerate conference this week. It will allow sellers to run personalized email marketing campaigns, with the goal being to "build lasting and profitable relationships with your existing customers."

Until now, Amazon only allowed sellers to target individuals who opted to "follow" their store or brand through its website, but Tailored Audiences removes that restriction and replaces it with three customer groups that can be targeted with personalized marketing. Those groups are Repeat Customers (ordered in the past 12 months), High-Spend Customers (top 25% of spenders), and Recent Customers (most recent 20%).

Amazon will offer a free tool and easy-to-use campaign templates to help create the marketing emails, which can be sent every seven or 14 days. Sellers will also be able to "monitor the impact" of a marketing campaign including details such as open rate, click-through rates, emails delivered, opt-out rate, sales, and conversion.

A beta test for Tailored Audiences is already underway, and Amazon expects a full release within six months. After that, buying anything on Amazon from a third-party seller or brand could also result in you receiving marketing emails from them. It looks as though the only way to stop them is by finding the opt-out link when the first marketing email arrives in your inbox.

Hopefully Amazon realizes before the beta test is over that not all customers want unsolicited marketing emails appearing in their inbox. The best way to avoid that is either by displaying an opt-out option as part of the checkout process, or offering the ability to opt-out of Targeted Audiences campaigns completely from your Amazon account settings.

Credit: pcmag.com

M2 MacBook Air Runs Windows 11 Faster Than Dell

Apple Bytes: 

Real-world experiments with the new MacBook Air show Apple’s latest can use Parallels 18 to run Windows 11 faster than a Dell XPS Plus.

It’s a tribute to the performance of the Apple M2 processor in the latest Air.

MacBook Air can be a high-performance PC

Windows has the lion’s share of the desktop/laptop market. That means that situations arise where dedicated macOS users need to be able to run Windows. That’s where Parallels comes in. This virtualization software can put Windows on a Mac.

The YouTube channel Max Tech loaded the recently released Parallels 18 onto the 2022 MacBook Air and tested it with Geekbench 5. It scored 1681 on the single-core test and 7260 on the multi-core one.

For comparison, the Dell XPS Plus scored 1182 single-core and 5476 multi-core on the same test while unplugged, losing to the Mac on both test segments. That said, take the Windows PC off its battery and its scores rise to 1548 single-core and 8103 multi-core, so one of its benchmark scores beats the MacBook.

But there’s a drawback for someone planing to use their notebook on the go. When talking about the Dell, Max Tech host Vadim Yuryev said, “The battery life on those machines is not good and those chips take a lot of power.”

This is not an example of an expensive Mac being more powerful than a cheap PC. The MacBook Air configuration in the test costs $1599, while the XPS Plus is $1849.

It’s all about the Apple M2

The 2022 iPad Air in the head-to-head test is one of the first with the Apple M2 processor. Apple says the chip is 18% quicker than its predecessor. Real-world tests show that it’s at least that fast.

The new processor already proved its chops by solidly out scoring other Macs in the Speedometer 2.0 benchmarking app.

Credit: cultofmac.com

Executive Board Minutes

Computer Technology Club, Inc.
Executive Board Minutes
September 9, 2022

Alan Marcus, President, called the meeting to order at 9:00AM. Members in attendance: Jim Trimboli, Bob Kenlay, Bob Roesener, Bob Leiner, Linda Tingley, Don Forgette, Steve Maly and Alan Marcus.

The Secretary’s report was read by Bob Kenlay. No corrections or additions necessary.

Jim Trimboli then read the current Treasurer's report. The current balance is $1545.85.

Alan Marcus asked the Board if there were any suggestions for future membership meetings. He has contacted several possible presenters with no success. It was suggested that the Executive Board Members should come up with current computer problem areas and possible solutions to be discussed at our regular club meetings.

Future meeting topics:

Sep 21 – “Creating Video Keepsakes From You Photos” by Alan Marcus.

Oct 19 – “Computer Issues and Solutions” by Board members

The meeting adjourned at 9:00AM.

Respectfully submitted,
Bob Kenlay, Secretary

This App Beeps Every Time Data Is Sent To Google

What if you got an audio cue every time your computer sent data to Google?

Enter Googerteller, an app created by developer Bert Hubert. It makes a beeping noise every time your computer sends data to Google, and as you might imagine, it beeps a lot.

The app works by using a list of IP addresses Google uses for its various services (excluding those related to Google Cloud) and alerts you whenever your computer communicates with one of those addresses. It beeps basically every time you click on anything.

This doesn't only happen when you use Google Chrome, the Googerteller is equally as beepy in Firefox.

Googerteller is only available for Linux (though there are ways to run it on a Mac), but it's doubtful that people are going to swarm to install it on their systems.

It's easy to forget just how often you're being tracked online, and the app's value is in providing a very direct (and scary) example of how often your data is being sent to Google.

Credit: mashable.com

DuckDuckGo, Your Go-To Search Engine

DuckDuckGo is the Google alternative you should be using.

Since Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, people have become more aware of what information they are giving companies and advertisers, sometimes without their knowledge or consent. The number of data breaches also rose to a record high of 1,862 in 2021. More people are taking steps to protect their information, and one way some folks are doing that is by using the search engine DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo has positioned itself as a privacy-focused alternative to search engines like Google. DuckDuckGo has rolled out Android and iOS mobile apps and browser extensions to help keep your information secure no matter if you use it on your phone or computer.

Here are five reasons why you should be using DuckDuckGo.

Stop online trackers from spying on you:

Online trackers are everywhere on the internet. Princeton's Web Transparency & Accountability Project found that Google trackers are present in about 75% of websites and Facebook trackers are present in about 25% of sites. These trackers collect data like where you live, who you live with and what your reading habits are, to create targeted-ads to sell you stuff.

DuckDuckGo identifies and blocks these online trackers from sites like Google and Facebook. The search engine can also show you the networks that have tracked you over time to give you a fuller picture on how your data is being used.

However, DuckDuckGo came under fire in May after tracking scripts from the company's partner, Microsoft, were found in DuckDuckGo's search engine. Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo's CEO, said this was due to the company's partnership agreement and said DuckDuckGo is working to change this policy.

You'll see fewer ads:

When using DuckDuckGo you should see fewer ads overall. If you run a search via Google, the results will likely show you a handful of ads, or an entire page, before you see something that's not sponsored content. When you search for something on DuckDuckGo, you'll see fewer ads in your search results and save some time.

In addition to fewer ads on the results page, because DuckDuckGo blocks online trackers, ads won't follow you across the web. If you use DuckDuckGo to search for something like a new food bowl for your pet, you won't keep seeing ads for pet bowls on different sites. These ads don't follow you around like said pet demanding you feed them despite having just given them food five minutes ago.

Websites should load faster:

On top of causing ads to follow you around and collecting your data, online trackers also add extra data to websites you visit, slowing the website's load time. DuckDuckGo blocks these trackers, frees up bandwidth and lets websites load faster.

Your search history isn't stored:

Let's say you get into a debate with your significant other over which way the toilet paper should hang. You say it should hang under. They say the patent for toilet paper clearly has the toilet paper going over, making that the correct way. You look up the patent and find that yes, the toilet paper is hanging over. You sit in disbelief, and now your search history will forever shame you.

If you use DuckDuckGo, though, this blemish won't show up in your search history because the search engine doesn't save your searches. Each time you open DuckDuckGo is a fresh start, free from anything you may have searched for before. A downside to this is there are no suggested search options. Also, if you want to look at something you saw previously you won't be able to search for it in your history.

Google's Incognito mode also keeps your search history private, too, but it does so by deleting your search history once you close the window. If you don't close the window, it's still stored. Incognito mode also still collects some of your information, like your location and search activity.

Your search results won't be influenced by your browsing history:

Google filters the results it shows you when you use it to search for something. Google shows you things related to your search it thinks you will click on based on the data it has collected on you. It doesn't bother showing you results it doesn't think you'll click.

This means if you try to look up a news story, you'll likely see stories that lean towards what you've already read. These types of results could fuel what psychology calls confirmation bias, which is when people find information that supports what they already want to believe.

However, in 2017 Google announced updates to its search quality guidelines to push offensive results and bogus conspiracy theories further down its search results.

DuckDuckGo will show you more robust search results. A DuckDuckGo and Google side-by-side to search for something like Facebook renders different results, which could influence your thoughts on the company. Presenting you with unbiased search results could give you a more complete picture of what you are searching for.

Because your search results aren't tailored to you and your interests, search results can feel imprecise when compared to Google. Some DuckDuckGo users on Reddit have said they have used Google for some searches when DuckDuckGo gives them irrelevant search results. This sounds like a downside, but it ultimately means DuckDuckGo is working properly.

Credit: cnet.com