Fidelity Investments recently fired four employees in Texas for participating in a $20 fantasy football league. While Cameron Pettigrew, one of the men fired for being part of the fantasy league, believes the decision is a "complete overreaction," the company is standing tall in its defense, noting "We have clear policies that relate to gambling. Participation in any form of gambling through the use of Fidelity time or equipment or any other company resource is prohibited." While similar, albeit more high profile cases have come up in recent years, particularly that of former Washington University football coach Rick Neuheisel who was fired for betting on college basketball tournament. Fidelity became aware of Mr. Pettigrew's fantasy league play by monitoring his email account, which should serve as a reminder to everyone that emails sent from your company email account are not private.
Traveling abroad with a computer is often a necessity, but that doesn't mean its easy. Just ask Lily Sussman, who, will recently on a trip to Israel, had her Macbook taken by Police, who subsequently shot the computer multiple times after being unsatisfied with Ms. Sussman's answers to security questions.
Bit.ly is teaming with a number of content providers on the web to bring custom link shorteners to market. The New York Times, The Onion, Huffington Post, Associated Content and the Wall Street Journal have all signed up for Bit.ly's pro service, which generates custom short links for specific sites. The new service comes just days after both Facebook and Google launched similar services.
Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV. Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information about Get Digital Classes, visit www.shellypalmer.com/seminars