Gregory Ebbecke

I married a Hufflepuff for what it’s worth. Would have bet a lot of money on the app sorting my daughter the same, but Ravenclaw for the win!

All I know for certain is that my middle daughter will be Slytherin.

Entirely possible. People are already beginning to shop that way, buying the non-perishables in bulk at Costco while stocking up on the essentials at their grocer of choice.

Have to assume the acquisition of Whole Foods was in at least some part with an eye to establishing the relationships to corner both ends of the market.

One of my favorite past times is to figure out the “shortcut” people are missing when I’m out and about and don’t feel like waiting in line.

Yesterday, it was extremely non-technical. The line for the outdoor registers at Solebury Orchards wrapped halfway back into the fields. The indoor register, however, had no line… Whether it was because…[Read more]

The bands were seamless otherwise, but the tech is a bit gimmicky at this point. There’s no reason for the bands to exist since the app can be set up to deliver an identical experience using NFC among other possibilities.

Bonus: while you’ll never wear the Magic Band once you leave the property, you’re less likely to delete the app. Depending…[Read more]

Don’t worry. Between machine learning and natural language processing, it won’t be long before Amazon (most likely) parses your purchase history well enough to proactively just start sending you food semi-regularly!

Your son’s photo is everything.

I only regret that WordPress doesn’t allow memes to be posted in the comments.

Going back to your post James (and Jen’s/Aja’s parallel contributions), would love to talk more about these dilemmas not just as parents, but as it relates to the larger impact on society of the tradeoffs between empowered independence and omnipresent surveillance.

I chuckle here as I remember my parents’ look at my then-toddler daughter…[Read more]

I will point out that Google similarly has Android Auto which … is a pale imitator and not worth mentioning further.

Screen mirroring is an incredibly overlooked application in my experience. We bought a new minivan a couple years back (and because we’re that cool, it’s a EV minivan), and despite all the bells and whistles, the biggest…[Read more]

And this is the central challenge (no pun intended) with technology. Consolidation generally leads to less friction, but it also risks giving one entity “too much” control/access to our lives.

This will be a central tenet of our class and something to look forward to later in the semester when we have more time to talk through the…[Read more]

I prefer to think we’re teaching our kids to be better critical thinkers rather than making them reliant on machines. Slight differentiation between teaching them that machines can do things for them vs. showing them how machines can help. I also find that even as relative youngsters, my kids are already more intuitive in some ways than I am!

Has anyone have any fun experiences with Google Photo’s (or any services) AI-driven sorting. It’s uncannily accurate purely on facial recognition. The single greatest obstacle to digital photos is having to organize them!

I know some services let you “reject” substitutions if you’re quick on the notifications, but most services are relatively lenient on refunding if items were “missed” (proof not required) or otherwise erroneous. Has that been your experience?

Consumer experience, given food is perishable, the high degree of error/refund may be a bigger drag on…[Read more]

It’s really only because of that Wired article that my experience was colored so dramatically. First-world problems of the highest degree, but given the hype behind what it was supposed to be, the experience really stood out for all the wrong reasons especially compared to how smooth almost every other element of the trip went. That day started…[Read more]

Great use case Aja and an interesting parallel to Jen’s experience. In this case, the technology is helping you to stay more actively engaged.

When we were looking at daycares, I actually had to whenever they tried to highlight their capabilities to livestream our childrens’ day. I knew that my wife would find the footage more compelling to…[Read more]

Love it! As you continue “smartifying” your home, IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/) might serve some inspiration. My initial idea was to have the WiFi cut out to kill TikTok access a minute or two after your alert, but that might be the nuclear option. Depending on your ISP though, you might be able to target certain devices to better “guide” their…[Read more]

Totally relatable Ralph! Have you moved over to online grocery yet? What are the odds of you placing your grocery order while ordering takeout?

What is it about the latter that makes it more frictionless than the former to you?

God help us if we’re in the hands of influencers…

I agree completely that you’re likely to see more integrations and “soft” placements, but these are inherently untargeted.

One of my goals for this class is to covey to all of you the value location has in targeting. While demographics, interest and prior history are important, there’s a…[Read more]