By Andy Marken

In the late 1800s electricity was first demonstrated in Indiana.

People fell to their knees in amazement.

No one questioned or challenged the folks who put on the demo.

Obviously they had powers beyond mere mortals!

Today you've got to do something spectacular just to get more a single 140 letter Tweet.

Technology permeates everything today.

By Andy Marken

A few months back, enough U.S. Senators pooled their votes and defeated the equal pay bill saying, "The disparity exists because a female social worker makes less than a male engineer."

O.K., maybe you shouldn't expect much heavy lifting thinking from people who want to guide your government, but really?

Project Syndicate

By George Soros

Last weekend's European Parliament election and presidential election in Ukraine produced sharply contrasting results. Europe's voters expressed their dissatisfaction with the way that the European Union currently functions, while Ukraine's people demonstrated their desire for association with the EU. European leaders and citizens should take this opportunity to consider what that means – and how helping Ukraine can also help Europe.

By Andy Marken

Googleâ•˙s YouTube has reached a deal to buy Twitch, a popular videogame-streaming company, for more than $1 billion, according to sources familiar with the pact.

The deal, in an all-cash offer, is expected to be announced imminently, sources said. If completed the acquisition would be the most significant in the history of YouTube, which Google acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion. The impending acquisition comes after longtime Google ad exec Susan Wojcicki was named CEO of YouTube earlier this year.

By Andy Marken

Even communities with multiple competitors weren't spared.

The Federal Communications Commission today issued a report on average cable TV prices in the US, and to the surprise of no one, it turns out they went up a lot.

By Andy Marken

CEO Nadella will unveil new tablets Tuesday, but can he stop the bleeding?

Microsoft has lost more than $1.2 billion so far on its Surface tablet business, an expensive experiment that makes tomorrow's revelations of new hardware an important milestone for the "devices" side of its corporate-refashioning strategy.

On Tuesday, CEO Satya Nadella is expected to step on a New York stage and unveil one or more new Surface tablets, and outline his direction for the in-house hardware project birthed by his predecessor, Steve Ballmer.

By Andy Marken

From reactive and pro-active engagement techniques to mapping customer journeys and developing multichannel, what are the current trends in social customer service and how will they affect what we consider best practice in the future?

Speaking on this subject last week at Our Social Timesâ•˙ Social Customer Service Summit 2014, was social media strategist Martin Hill-Wilson.

By Andy Marken

TV Everywhere is too complicated and fragmented to be really popular – but it has nonetheless changed television.

Ask any TV executive about TV Everywhere, and you˙re going to hear plenty of praise for the industryâ•˙s efforts to stream live and on-demand programming to pay TV subscribers. But if you keep them talking, youâ•˙re inevitably going to get a long laundry list of problems.

By Andy Marken

Online movie service FlixFling has partnered with packaged-media distributor Video Product Distributors (VPD), offering the latterâ•˙s retail clients access to UltraViolet-compatible digital copies.

By Andy Marken

Intel Corp's Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich mingled with electronics buffs at Silicon Valley's annual maker mecca on Saturday as the chipmaker looks to amateur inventors to inspire a new wave of smart clothing.

With sales of smartphones losing steam, technology companies including Intel believe that wearable computing devices - a still undefined category including smart watches, fitness trackers and Google Glass - could become a major trend in personal computing.

By Andy Marken

On their way to becoming ╲all-purpose╡ consumer electronic devices, smartphones and tablets are beginning to supplant, or at least serve as an alternative to more specialized, non-IP consumer electronics control devices in U.S. homes. According to new market research from The Diffusion Group (TDG), for instance, 16 percent of adult broadband users use a tablet or smartphone as TV remote control.

Most (12 percent) are using smartphones to control their TV sets. Eight percent are using tablets, while 4 percent are using both types of mobile devices, according to TDGâ•˙s 1Q ╲Benchmarking the Connected Consumer, 2014╡ report.

By Andy Marken

Even though former CEO Steve Jobs replaced the rainbow Apple logo in 1997 with the now standard solid color, the company didnâ•˙t get rid of its old signs.