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Tag: mobile
4 Deals for Avoiding Texting Tickets And Car Accident Disputes On the Road

4 Deals for Avoiding Texting Tickets And Car Accident Disputes On the Road

Right now, 15 states prohibit drivers from using a hand-held device for any reason while driving. And a majority — 36, to be exact — have some laws governing how and when a driver is able to access their phone while on the road. Considering those numbers are only likely to rise in both cases, check out these popular The National Memo Store deals on some of the best hands-free driving aids that money can buy.

ExoMount Magnet Air Universal Smartphone Car Mount

The uniquely designed Magnet Air clamps on to your air vent instead of sticking to you dashboard like the average phone mount. It uses magnets to lock your smartphone into place and offers full 360 degree rotation to make sure you can always see your display without taking your hands off the wheel.

Buy now: This ExoMount is only $22.95, an almost 25% discount off its regular price.

High Definition Dash Cam

Have an unimpeachable visual record of everything that happens in and around your vehicle with this ultra-convenient, ultra-sharp HD dashboard camera. With a 4x digital zoom, motion-detection and infrared capabilities as well as a handy swivel arm, you can point and record all the action on the roadway ahead — or whatever action is happening in the vehicle itself.

Buy now: Usually $59.99, you can get this HD cam now for half off — $30.

Layze Flexible Universal Car Mount

When a swivel isn’t enough, get a car mount with even more flexibility — like Layze’s gooseneck arm that can get your device positioned exactly where you want it for maximum convenience. Portable and lightweight, with a rubber-reinforced slide-free shock-resistant clamp to stay in place, your device will go absolutely nowhere in the Layze’s firm grip.

Buy now: At 73% off, this mount is only $12.99 for a limited time.

PapaGo Dash Cams

The big daddies of dash cams, the GoSafe has a host of high-end features and customization options to suit anyone’s vehicle recording needs. With the GoSafe S36, you’ll have crystal clear highest quality 1296p/2K Ultra HD video in one of the smallest bodied cameras on the market. Or go with the GoSafe 760 front and rear cam set to capture everything that happens behind your vehicle as well.

Buy now: You can pick up either the S36 for $124.99 (regularly $179.99, 30% off) or the 760 for $199.99 (usually $249.99, 20% off).

This sponsored post is brought to you by StackCommerce. 

That Buzzing In Your Pocket? It’s A Politician Wanting Your Vote

That Buzzing In Your Pocket? It’s A Politician Wanting Your Vote

By Lindsay Wise, McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — If you thought you couldn’t escape the onslaught of political ads in 2012, just wait until 2016.

This election cycle, campaigns are expected to fully embrace mobile advertising as a way to target voters anytime, anywhere.

For the first time, spending on political ads for digital media is expected to top $1 billion, rivaling the estimated amounts campaigns spend on telemarketing and radio, according to a report released this month by the research firm Borrell Associates.

That’s still just a fraction of the total $11.4 billion Borrell estimates will be poured into political advertising in 2016. But it’s a big increase since 2012, when spending on digital political ads was just $159 million.

Compared to the cost of airing a traditional television commercial, digital ads are a relatively inexpensive way for campaigns to get attention, said Steven Smith, director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.

“The formula is simple: Do something humorous, encourage links in social media and shape the initial impression of an opponent before he or she can do it themselves,” Smith said.

A recent example popped up on some Missourians’ smartphones during the first Republican debate: A series of 10-second videos on the messaging platform Snapchat that portrayed Jason Kander, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, as a “pandering panda” who hobnobs with wealthy donors and special interests in Washington.

Funded by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Snapchat videos were followed by a website titled “Kander Pander,” along with a longer video featuring a person in a panda suit dancing with a money bag. Corresponding social media posts spread the panda-themed attack on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Kander’s campaign manager, Abe Rakov, dismissed the quirky ads as a sign of desperation from Republicans worried about the re-election of incumbent GOP Sen. Roy Blunt.

But the dancing panda also is a harbinger of the changes coming to political advertising as Americans grow increasingly reliant on their mobile devices for everything from checking the weather to buying a latte.

Snapchat, which automatically erases messages in a matter of seconds, might seem like an odd venue for ads. But with 71 percent of Snapchat users between the ages of 18 and 34, it’s easy to see why politicians are eager to use such tools to reach younger voters where they spend a lot of their time — on their smartphones.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush turned to Snapchat to announce he was running for president earlier this year, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio used it to showcase behind-the-scenes footage from his own presidential campaign kickoff.

Another Republican presidential hopeful, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, used the app to air brief videos of him destroying the tax code by setting it aflame, feeding it through a wood chipper and hacking it with a chainsaw.

Not to be left out, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker aired their own 10-second presidential campaign ads on Snapchat in July.

“Maybe I oughta run,” Kasich says with a smile on his Snapchat ad, a shaky production that gives the impression it was shot from the end of a selfie stick.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton joined the Snapchat craze this month. She joked at a fundraiser in Iowa that she loved Snapchat because “those messages disappear all by themselves,” a reference to the ongoing scandal regarding her use of a private email server while secretary of state.

Candidates also are flocking to Pinterest, Instagram and apps such as Meerkat and Periscope that let mobile users livestream video from their phones.

“If 2004 was about Meetup, 2008 was about Facebook and 2012 was about Twitter, 2016 is going to be about Meerkat (or something just like it),” wrote Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior public relations adviser to President Barack Obama, on the website Medium.

Broadcasting an event live used to require a costly truck and satellite time, Pfeiffer points out. “Now you can do it with your phone … the same machine you use to text, check Instagram, hail an Uber, and play Candy Crush,” he wrote.

Smartphone use in the United States has exploded since the 2012 election, increasing by 394 percent, said Andrew Lipsman, vice president of marketing and insights at comScore, a company that tracks digital consumer behavior.

“Mobile has really taken over the landscape,” Lipsman said. “So if that’s where consumers are going to spend their time, from an advertising perspective that’s where you need to be.”

And then there’s the fact that two highly sought after voting demographics are reachable by mobile: millennials and Hispanics, Lipsman said.

Nearly 80 percent of Hispanic Internet users say they access the Internet on a phone, tablet or other mobile device, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

And those in the millennial generation tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time on their phones, Lipsman said.

His company’s research also suggests another reason why political strategists want to invest in mobile ads: They tend to work better than online ads.

“That’s a surprise for a lot of people,” he said. “One of the big reasons is a lot of online ads are relegated to the side of the screen, but a mobile ad takes up most or all of your screen. So it can be a quick impression, but it can make a big impression very quickly.”

Mobile advertising has limitations, however. People are not as likely to make donations from their mobile phones as they are from a desktop computer, Lipsman said.

And mobile ads that “microtarget” voters based on their location or personal data could backfire if they make people feel harassed.

“There’s an irony here that many of these candidates claim they would support protecting consumer privacy, yet their campaigns are in essence engaged in online and offline stalking,” said Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Digital Democracy in Washington.

Photo: A mobile phone shows a Facebook page of campaign propaganda to promote Hillary Clinton as president in 2016, in this photo illustration taken April 13, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Music Is More Mobile Than Ever, But Convenience Comes At A Price

Music Is More Mobile Than Ever, But Convenience Comes At A Price

By Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Need any more proof that smartphones have taken over our lives? You know it’s true when artists start writing songs about losing their lovers to them.

These pocket-size computers have made everyone’s ability to stay in touch with music — and the world — more convenient, more portable and more distracting than ever. The notion that any piece of music you can possibly crave is just a click away, anywhere, anytime, is getting more refined with each new iteration from tech companies that have in many ways usurped the role of record companies, radio stations, video channels and record stores.

“The paradise of infinite storage,” as McGill University professor (and former Clash producer) Sandy Pearlman once rhapsodized, has arrived.

It’s indisputably paradise for music fans. It has empowered them to an unprecedented degree, not only granting them immediate access to just about every piece of music ever recorded, but allowing them to play with, remix and distribute it, then discard it as soon as the next musical bauble comes along.

For artists, the results have been less idyllic. The downturn in physical media — compact disc sales have been cut in half the last decade — and the transition to online music have forced musicians to take at least a temporary pay cut on recording royalties. The transition to digital put new emphasis on individual songs over albums. So instead of paying $15 for a CD, listeners downloaded a favorite track at iTunes for 99 cents. Now they’re paying fractions of a penny to stream tracks at digital platforms such as Spotify, Beats Music and Pandora. And some aren’t paying at all to acquire music; a recent study by the NPD Group concludes that mobile applications have eclipsed file-sharing services as the most widely used source of free music downloads. About 27 million mobile users have downloaded at least one song in the past year, most from unauthorized sources.

Artists benefit by showcasing their music on an accessible platform that is less restrictive than commercial radio, but streaming revenue in general has lagged what artists once made selling CDs or downloads.

“As a consumer, I love (new platforms such as) Spotify,” says Norwegian singer Ane Brun. “They cover so much music. But as an artist, it’s still not there. The payment is really low for musicians. There are different options coming in all the time, more companies. Eventually if consumers have more choices, the competition could help artists. But we’re not there yet.”

For emerging artists, streaming services combined with relentless social networking can deliver much-needed exposure. Alexander Beggins of Texas-based Wild Child says the band owes its steadily growing following to building one-on-one relationships with fans that wouldn’t have been possible in the pre-digital era.

The smartphone culture “is absolutely the reason we’re doing as well as we are,” he says. “If you’re on Facebook or tweet us, we’re right back at you. We respond to people every day and have an ongoing dialogue with our fans. It’s so important to stay connected to the people who spend money and talk about you. With Spotify, we had 7 million plays on our first album, and that does translate into dollars that help us stay on the road. It’s such a wide net you can cast, reaching people in different countries that we never would be able to reach before.”

But there are deeper implications about what it all means. For some, the shifts in human behavior that have been promoted by the tech boom do not augur well for the quality of music.

“I have very dark, complex feelings about the way social media operates and the omnipresence of iPhones,” says California soul singer Nick Waterhouse. “It has become an appendage. It’s how people I care very much about interact with everything. And it’s (terrible). It’s no way to live. It’s just dark. This naive unleashing of an epidemic, to the point where it’s how people process everything. I used to think it was fine, like having an AM radio. But I know so many people who listen to music out of their iPhone speakers. It becomes background noise, part of the wash. It makes music not special anymore. If you eat pizza all the time, it doesn’t taste like pizza anymore.”

There’s no disputing that sound quality has been degraded in the digital era. MP3 files heard over tiny iPod or smartphone ear buds just can’t match the quality of CDs or vinyl, nor was that ever the intention. In recent weeks, one of digital sound’s biggest detractors — Neil Young — introduced a new digital player, Pono, that he contended rivals the fidelity of a phonograph playing a vinyl album.

Vinyl is a fetishized relic of the 20th century, a beautiful artifact celebrated by the crackle of sampled riffs and drum breaks on hip-hop tracks. It’s also a growing industry, particularly for indie bands and record stores; vinyl sales have skyrocketed in recent years (up 33 percent in 2013 from the previous year) but still represent a tiny fraction of overall music sales.

As frustrating as its limitations can appear to artists craving better sound, more attentive listeners and fairer compensation, the digital world is still in its awkward adolescence. The digital overhaul of intellectual property and entertainment media — not just music, but books, newspapers, magazines, video, movies and television — has just begun. The world will be radically different in 10 years. Smartphones will only become smarter. Relatively new innovations such as Instagram, Vine and Twitter will fade and be replaced by new digital fads, just as MySpace, Napster and Xanga once were.

“Five years from now, we’re going to be saying, ‘Can you believe we were obsessed with 140-character conversations?’” says Matador Records publicist Nils Bernstein. The next decade, he says, should be about how technology can facilitate deeper understanding and wider appreciation of music and culture. Because without an incentive to create — and artists have been creating under adverse conditions for centuries — all the technological innovations in the world won’t matter.

Photo: Patrik Moen via Flickr