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Tech Press, Shaping the Narrative, and Silicon Valley Time

Andrew Orr ·

Tech press and the narratives they craft typically follow Silicon Valley Time, or a special “clock” otherwise known as the hero’s journey.

A company’s narrative moves like a clock: it starts at midnight, ticking off the hours. The tone and sentiment about how a business is doing move from positive (sunrise, midday) to negative (dusk, darkness). And often the story returns to midnight, rebirth and a new day.

This is an interesting story on how the tech press covers news, and what lessons companies can learn.

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Long Press Shortcuts for iOS Safari

Andrew Orr ·

I’ve covered iOS 12 tips and tricks that you might have forgotten. Now I’d like to resurface a tip from 2017 about shortcuts for iOS Safari.

You might not know it, but Safari has some hidden shortcuts tucked behind some of the icons. This will let you perform certain actions a little faster, like quickly access the desktop version of a website, add a bookmark, and even close multiple tabs at once.

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Providers Tout 5G Claims and Names Before the Network Exists

Charlotte Henry ·

5G is the talk of Las Vegas at CES this week. However, there is mounting controversy about what cellular network providers are actually declaring as 5G. The superfast network will not actually be launched until 2020 or even 2021, but the cellular providers are still keen to brand things as 5G now. A piece on the Associated Press noted that “AT&T has drawn ridicule by relabeling the network used by some of its phones as ‘5G E’,” for example. This main seem a relatively superficial issue but in terms of been clear with customers, it matters.

There’s a history of carriers being murky about network claims. AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint started calling an enhanced 3G network 4G in the early 2010s. There’s more pushback this time because people are now more aware of what a next-generation network can do.