August 2016

Whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump wins the White House, one thing seems sure: The US will get a president with scant first-hand understanding of modern technology. Clinton's tech travails are all over the headlines, including the lax security of her home-brewed e-mail server and her documented struggles with fax machines — and the recently disclosed hacking of the Democratic National Committee's e-mails won't do much to burnish her party's image of cyber competence.

But Trump's hardly a candidate for the Geek Squad either, despite the prolific round-the-clock tweeting strategy he uses to dominate the headlines. He has boasted that he hardly ever sends e-mails — and, like Clinton, he often relies on staff to print news articles off the Internet. “I’m just not a believer in e-mail,” Trump said during a news conference during which he criticized Clinton's use of a private server when she was secretary of state. The tech-aloofness of the two nominees marks a sharp break from President Barack Obama, who fought to keep a mobile phone when he entered the White House, spends downtime surfing his iPad and wrote about his awe at the power of the Internet in his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope.” That raises the prospect that the next occupant of the Oval Office — charged with making decisions on issues like encryption, the fight against a social-media savvy Islamic State, and the growing automation of the American economy — will be less familiar with consumer technologies than the average citizens who use them.

[Commentary] 240 days. That’s how long it's been since Hillary Clinton last held this thing called a press conference. How long is 240 days? With the NFL preseason set to kick off this week, let's put it this way: You can play not one, but two NFL regular seasons back-to-back in that period of time. December 4, 2015. That was the date that the Democratic nominee last spoke to the embedded press corps that follows her every move and knows the campaign better than anyone.

So many interviews we've seen of Clinton during this campaign consist on one theme: Her always being asked to respond to something her opponent said or did. And when each interview is done, viewers watching at home walk away still having little idea what Clinton's campaign is actually about other the need to defeat Trump. But while going on Fox News and facing hard questions is noteworthy (Clinton has only done so three times since 2014), it's not a press conference... something the media seems to be letting her skate on despite not holding one in 2016.

It appears Verizon wasn't done making acquisitions. One week after snagging the core assets of ailing tech giant Yahoo for $4.8 billion, Verizon announced it will acquire fleet management solutions company Fleetmatics for about $2.4 billion. The Dublin-based Fleetmatics boasts technology to allow small- and medium-sized companies to manage mobile workforces. The company employs 1,200 workers, and serves 37,000 customers as of March of 2016. "Fleetmatics is a market leader in North America -- and increasingly internationally," said Andrés Irlando, CEO of Verizon Telematics. The deal is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2016.