Last month Apple released a “Mobility Data Trends Tool.”

The company is utilizing data coming from its iPhones, more precisely from its Maps app. The information is generated by analyzing requests for directions made by you and me and millions of others to Apple Maps. Data sets, current and historical, are compared to show changes in the volume of people driving, walking, or taking public transportation.

Apple’s assurance:

Privacy is one of our core values, so Maps…   Read more →

The annual inflation rate for the United States was 3.1% for the 12 months ending January, compared to the previous rate of 3.4%, according to U.S. Labor Department data published on last week.

If you were wondering about “inflation,” here’s the International Monetary Fund to help you out:

Inflation is the rate of increase in prices over a given period of time. … Inflation represents how much more expensive the relevant set of goods and/or services has become over…   Read more →

We have COVID. And with it COVIDspeak. The virus is changing the way we speak! All over the world. And quickly, too.

There’s “covidiot.” It’s even in the Urban Dictionary.

(If you don’t know who or what a covidiot is, it’s is exactly what you suspect it is. That dumbo with 300 rolls of toilet paper in their shopping cart. I.e., anyone behaving stupidly or irresponsibly in these days of crisis—covidiotic behavior: partying on beaches, spitting on items in a…   Read more →

The holidays are lonely times for a lot of folks, especially this year of the pandemic, what with lockdowns and distancing. A 2018 study from Cigna found 54 percent of Americans confessing loneliness. In a couple of years that had grown to 61 percent!

But there is good news: loneliness may actually be good for you!

So claim scientists from McGill University in “The Default Network of the Human Brain is Associated with Perceived Social Isolation,” published recently in…   Read more →

Several months ago, an eerie photograph sparked all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories.

It showed someone who looked a lot like Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, aged 56, of a rare cancer of the pancreas. But this photograph was taken in the second half of 2019. In Egypt. In some random café. And shared on Facebook by one Ahmed Basyouney who wasn’t available for comment.

The guy is even barefoot, as Jobs often was.

One Twitter user captioned a photo of the…   Read more →

Shiri Melumad is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. This researcher has done a lot of work on smartphones and our relationship with that ubiquitous, ever-present device.

Said Melumad, of her own experience:

Just holding it made me feel good. It gave me a sense of ease or calm. It was similar to children who seek out their pacifiers when they are stressed. For many of us, our phone represents an attachment object, much…   Read more →