Author Archives: Preston Gralla

After an electoral cycle full of hate and intolerance, who knew that an unpretentious 30-second Amazon ad could do so much good? You’ve probably seen it: a simple story of a Christian pastor and a Muslim imam having tea, laughing and complaining about their creaky knees. Later, each independently comes up with the ideal gift for the other: kneepads. The final few seconds show the two men putting on their pads and kneeling to pray. The ad is quite effective. Even after repeated viewing, it still brings a tear to my eye.

I’m apparently not alone. The ad has been a viral sensation, with 10 million views on Facebook and nearly 2 million on YouTube, not to mention countless millions on television (Amazon has bought a tremendous amount of airtime for it). News outlets including USA Today, Fortune and CNN took note of its message of the universality of faith and religious tolerance for Muslims.

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After an electoral cycle full of hate and intolerance, who knew that an unpretentious 30-second Amazon ad could do so much good? You’ve probably seen it: a simple story of a Christian pastor and a Muslim imam having tea, laughing and complaining about their creaky knees. Later, each independently comes up with the ideal gift for the other: kneepads. The final few seconds show the two men putting on their pads and kneeling to pray. The ad is quite effective. Even after repeated viewing, it still brings a tear to my eye.

I’m apparently not alone. The ad has been a viral sensation, with 10 million views on Facebook and nearly 2 million on YouTube, not to mention countless millions on television (Amazon has bought a tremendous amount of airtime for it). News outlets including USA Today, Fortune and CNN took note of its message of the universality of faith and religious tolerance for Muslims.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

That thing you carry in your pocket may be called a smartphone, but its main purpose isn’t to talk to other people — it’s a tiny computer you use to connect to the internet, get information and find and use apps. So, for the fourth year in a row we’ve gone on a mission to find out which mobile service provider gives you the most comprehensive and reliable data network coverage, the fastest upload and download speeds, and the most bang for the buck.

To do it, we turned to the experts — you and other Computerworld readers. We conducted an 8-week-long online survey this summer asking smartphone users to rate providers in multiple categories: average upload speeds, average download speeds, availability of connection, reliability of connection, performance relative to cost, technical support, selection of phone models, customer service/billing and more.

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Nearly the entire tech industry, with the exception of PayPal founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, publicly lined up against Donald Trump and for Hillary Clinton in the recent presidential election. But words are one thing and actions another. And actions taken by the tech industry in the last decades helped seal Trump’s surprise victory.

Trump won, in large part, thanks to support by blue-collar voters without college degrees in the Rust Belt, particularly in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. The region has been hollowed out by a changing economy in which well-paying manufacturing jobs have been disappearing, replaced either by low-paying service jobs or by nothing at all.

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