Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Lawmakers in Europe are concentrating their efforts on one aspect of online privacy that may be being overlooked in the rush to "check in" everywhere, and are suggesting your real-time (and historic) geo-tracking data may be as personal as DNA. Digital privacy is seriously in the spotlight at the moment--and in the U.S

A few key strategies to make the most of brand monitoring can help your reputation in a big way.

1. As if to remind us that the world of TV is changing incredibly fast, Netflix has signed a deal with Lions Gate Entertainment to bring all the Mad Men archive shows to the digital online channel. The show is highly acclaimed and Netflix is reported to be paying around $1 million per episode--meaning it fully expects to recoup more than that from subscriptions and ads (curiously fitting given the show's setting!).

Mark Zuckerberg insists that privacy in the digital age is fleeting. But authorities have other ideas: A grand jury investigation is looking at smartphone apps that shared personal data without permission. Various news articles have popped up over the last several months relating to private user data abuses by the developers of smartphone apps.

Academic librarians, led by Harvard's, are positioning themselves as the successors to Google's scuttled vision for a massive digital library. But do they lack a coherent vision? Not long ago a federal judge in Manhattan scuttled Google 's plans to create a digital universal library (a dream kicked off when Larry Page scanned "The Google Book" years ago--his company has since scanned 15 million more).

Back in 1995, a few of the editors at Scientific American decided to resurrect a tradition of a previous generation of editors, who saw fit to publish a joke column in each April issue. This particular April Fools piece came to be with a little luck: back then. as the editor of the Amateur Scientist column, I use to look for projects that gave some hands-on insight to one of the feature articles in the same issue

Today, BMW announced the planned creation of a tech incubator in New York City to seed innovations in mobile and location-based services. The announcement follows the automaker's establishment in February of a venture capital company, BMW i Ventures, with an investment fund of as much as $100 million, and serves as yet another indication that BMW is turning its eye toward the mobile startup scene

Your favorite coffee shop is crowded with harried people, and you are standing shoulder to shoulder in a slow-moving line. Each jostling shift of the crowd aggravates your severe social anxiety. You start gasping for air; your heart quickens and you want to run

Google encroaches on social, with its new +1 feature. You click on stuff that your friends like.

How does a company's structure and ability to adopt new tech affect it's ability to evolve strategically?We continue our Leadership Hall of Fame series, a year-long look at the top business books and authors, with an excerpt from The Innovator's Dilemma (1997) by Clayton M. Christensen. From the earliest studies of the problems of innovation, scholars, consultants, and managers have tried to explain why leading firms frequently stumble when confronting technology change.

Photograph by Henry Leutwyler Architect, designer, and the advertising impresario behind Tronic, GoldRun. Altrendo Images/Getty Images (plane); Colin Hawkins/Getty Images (gold-panning); Seth Wenig/AP (museum patron, painting); Universal Pictures/Photofest (The Fast and the Furious); Dave M. Benett/Getty Images (Saatchi) , book (no credit) .red_highlight { color:red; font-family:Arial, Helvitica; font-weight:bold; font-size:13.5px !important; } .border-bottom { border-bottom:#000 dotted 2px; padding-bottom:10px; margin-bottom:10px; } .article p{ overflow:hidden; } Big idea: "I want to turn every aspect of our lives into a game," says the 35-year-old entrepreneur, "by marrying the digital and the physical." Using video, animation, mobile apps, and now augmented reality, Rosenthal creates interactive advertising campaigns for brands ranging from H&M and Yahoo to Esquire magazine and shoe company Airwalk

On March 16, 2011, Fast Company was awarded a National Magazine Award for Digital Media for its breakout site, FastCoDesign.com , in the Online Department category, which honors a regularly updated, clearly branded department or channel. Fast Company received two nominations from the National Magazine Awards for Digital Media, the magazine industry's highest honor, from the American Society of Magazine Editors: "The Influence Project" , a print story from the November 2010 issue, with a comprehensive online companion, in the Multimedia Package category, and Co.Design, a site dedicated to the intersection of business. Co.Design was awarded the Ellie for the Online Department category

The South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival has come and gone here in Austin, Texas. One of the most buzzed about topics was group messaging. I did some research about these new services, mainly Kik and GroupMe.

As the NCAA men’s basketball tournament brings our national productivity to a halt today, with 16 games between noon and midnight EST, there are plenty of intriguing storylines.

The long-awaited New York Times digital subscriptions paywall has been revealed and, at first glance, it seems to be exactly how Apple would like it to be. Print purists will be pleased it's more expensive than the paper edition.