Revisiting Amazon One

Because my local Amazon Fresh post is taking off, it’s a good time to revisit the “one” thing Uplanders will encounter when they get there.

I’ve talked about Amazon One palm/vein biometrics several times in the past.

Meanwhile, Amazon One is available at over 400 U.S. locations, with more on the way.

And it’s also available (or soon will be) on TP-Link door locks. But the How-To Geek writer is confused:

“TP-Link says that these palm vein patterns are so unique that they can even tell the difference between identical twins, making them safer than regular fingerprint or facial recognition methods.”

Um…fingerprints? Must be a Columbia University grad.

And the TP-Link page for the product has no sales restrictions. Even Illinois residents can buy it. Presumably there’s an ironclad consent agreement with every enrollment to prevent BIPA lawsuits.

(Picture from Imagen 3)

Are Your Competitors Stealing From You? The Ultimate Guide to Increasing Prospect Awareness

Technology marketers, do your prospects know who you are?

If they don’t, then your competitors are taking your rightful revenue.

Don’t let your competitors steal your money.

Before I tell you how Bredemarket can solve your technology company’s awareness problem, let me spill the secret of why I’m asking the question in the first place.

The wildebeest’s friend

Normally I don’t let non-person entities write Bredemarket content, but today I’m making an exception.

Sources.

My usual generative AI tool is Google Gemini, so I sent this prompt:

“What are the five most important types of marketing content to create for a technology software company?”

A little secret: if you want generative AI to supply you with 3 things, ask for more than that. Some of the responses will suck, but maybe the related ones are insightful.

In this case I only wanted ONE type of marketing content, but I reserve the right to “co-author” four more posts based upon the other responses.

Of the 5 responses from Google Gemini, this was the first:

 “In-depth Problem-Solving Content (Think Blog Posts, White Papers, Ebooks): Your potential customers are likely facing specific challenges. Content that dives deep into those problems and offers insightful solutions (even if it doesn’t directly pitch your product) builds trust and positions you as a thought leader. Think “The Ultimate Guide to [Industry Challenge]” or a white paper on “Navigating [Complex Technical Issue].””

Now you see where I got the idea for the title of this post. Normally I shy away from bombastic words like “ultimate,” but this sage is going a little wild.

So the bot tells me that the most important type of marketing content for a technology software company is short-form or long-form problem-solving content.

Going meta 

Let’s get a little meta (small m) here.

If your prospects don’t know who you are, create customer-focused content that explains how your company can solve their problems.

Solving problems.

Now let’s get meta meta.

If you need help creating this content, whether it’s blog posts, articles, white papers, case studies, proposals, or something else, Bredemarket can help you solve your problem.

Let’s talk about your problem and how we can work together to solve it. Book a free meeting via the https://bredemarket.com/cpa/ URL.

(All AI illustrations from Imagen 3 via Google Gemini, of course)

Bredemarket’s “CPA.”

Beyond Voice: Adobe Experience Manager and the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity

I previously described how technology from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity protects you from voice deepfakes.

But as Krassimir Boyanov of KBWEB Consult notes, C2PA technology provides the “provenance” of other types of assets.

Adobe is implementing C2PA-compliant content credentials in AEM [Adobe Experience Manager]. These can tell you the facts about an asset (in C2PA terms, the “provenance“): whether the image of a product from a particular manufacturer was created by that manufacturer, whether a voice recording of Anil Chakravarthy was created by Anil Chakravarthy, or whether an image of a peaceful meadow was actually generated by artificial intelligence (such as Adobe Firefly).

(AI generated image of Richard Nixon from https://www.youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rkQn-43ixs)

April 2025 Update on Bredemarket’s Proposal Services

This post has two purposes:

  • To brag about myself.
  • To let you know how this braggart can help you with your identity, cybersecurity, and technology proposals.

First, the bragging

Let’s start the bragging by announcing that one of Bredemarket’s consulting clients was recently notified of an award by a federal agency.

I won’t name the client or the agency, other than to clarify that the agency is NOT the U.S. Department of Education, the Agency for International Development, the Voice of America, or similar agencies that have taken a beating over the last 2 1/2 months. So the award is fairly safe.

So what do I have to brag about?

To be honest, not much.

Second, the reality

Yes, I made sure that the proposal was compliant and persuasive, that it addressed all the required points, that it went to the correct person, that it stayed within the mandated page and word limits, and that it was delivered before the due date and time.

But if the client had proposed an inferior solution, questionable implementation plan, or unqualified personnel, there would NOT have been an award regardless of whether the text was in 12-point Times New Roman with the appropriate margins.

Like all Bredemarket projects, I collaborated with the client to submit the proposal, which in the end was a winning proposal.

Third, how did I get here?

I’ve told the story before, but I kind of fell into the proposals world in October 1994 when I began consulting for the Proposals Department at a company called Printrak International. After several acquisitions, the company became part of IDEMIA 23 years later.

During my time at Printrak, Motorola, MorphoTrak, and IDEMIA I spent two separate stints in Proposals, primarily focusing on state and local opportunities with various international opportunities thrown in.

Things changed in 2020 when Bredemarket started offering proposal services. With one exception (a State of California healthcare-related proposal), all my proposal work has been at the federal level.

I’ve worked at various proposal maturity levels, ranging from working via SMA in a mature proposal development process, to cases in which I was the sole proposal expert. But the keys always remain the same: work with the client, do great work, and turn the thing in on time.

Fourth, how will YOU get THERE?

If your organization has the need to submit a technology software proposal, perhaps I can help. I can plug into your existing proposals organization, or if necessary I can BE your proposals organization.

If you’d like to talk about it, schedule a free consultation via my “CPA” page (the “P” stands for Proposal) and check the “Proposal services” check box.

https://bredemarket.com/cpa/

(Wildebeest proposal picture from Imagen 3)

If Your Identity System Only Manages People, It Is Flawed

This is painful, but it has to be done.

I’ve spent 30 years working with the identities of PEOPLE and ensuring that all PEOPLE accessing a system are properly identified.

In other words, leaving a huge GAPING security hole.

Look at what Okta is doing;

“[N]ew Okta Platform capabilities…help businesses secure AI agents and other non-human identities with the same level of visibility, control, governance, and automation as human ones. The Okta Platform will now bring a unified, end-to-end identity security fabric to organizations for managing and securing all types of identities across their ecosystem, from AI agents to API keys to employees.”

I think that “unified” will take the place of “trust” as the identity buzzword. Thankfully.

If you’re only selling biometrics, or maybe biometrics and ID cards, where will your customers go to get the rest of their systems? Or will you just be a commodity supplier to the companies that provide the REAL systems?

(Unified security AI picture from Imagen 3)

When Can Cybersecurity Professionals “Wing It”?

In my career, I’ve experienced all levels of process maturity, ranging from “process for process’ sake” to “winging it.”

  • Many, many years before Marie Kondo popularized the term “spark joy,” one of my former employers shut down the entire office for the afternoon so that we could spend that time cleaning up. Thankfully this was not instituted (institutionalized?) as a weekly occurrence.
  • On the other extreme, some organizations resist process and just wing it. To the point that I literally hide when I use a process.

Now the ability to “wing it” can be used in some circumstances but not in others. Obviously improvisational comedians “wing it” by definition. But Ike (pre-matrix) couldn’t have used the “wing it” approach on D-Day.

What about cybersecurity? Can you “wing it” when you’re attacked?

Jack Freund says no:

The evolving threat landscape demands robust governance architectures and well-defined board duties to ensure resilience against cyberthreats. Effective cybergovernance not only protects an organization’s digital assets but also reinforces trust among stakeholders. 

Governance is a critical component of cybersecurity, if for no other reason than to prove that your organization actually HAS cybersecurity. Ideally an organization will govern its cybersecurity by some type of “maturity model.”

And that’s more than refraining from calling someone a poopy head.

(AI image from Imagen 3)

Anyone Interested in Tax Fraud?

Anyone interested in tax fraud—a true financial identity challenge that is timely right about now?

authID recently shared a link to an Identity Week article on the topic, “Americans express concern about their personal data in tax fraud.” The article addressed findings from Allstate Identity Protection.

“40% of cases where Allstate restored identity protection were reported during the tax season.”

Granted that this is a skewed number, because tax season is 2 1/2 months long, and not all identity fraud during the period has to do with tax filings. But there does appear to be an uptick.

And Allstate isn’t the only organization providing an anti-fraud solution. The aforementioned authID has a solution of its own:

“Our multi-layered biometric authentication technology provides the security needed to protect sensitive financial transactions with one-in-one-billion false-match accuracy and lightning-fast processing speeds. Our innovative PrivacyKey™ technology eliminates biometric data storage risks, helping financial institutions implement robust identity safeguards during high-risk periods like tax season.”

(Hands holding 1040 form AI picture from Imagen 3)

NPEs and Emotions

When I introduced emotions as the seventh question in Bredemarket’s seven questions, I was thinking about how a piece of content could invoke a variety of emotions in a human reader.

Oh, John, your thinking is so limited.

In a piece in Freethink, Kevin Kelly discussed emotions…in non-person entities (NPEs).

“Like anything else, I think in some cases robots with emotions will be really good. It’s good in the sense that emotions are one of the best human interfaces. If you want to interface with us humans, we respond to emotions, and so having an emotional component in robots is a very smart, powerful way to help us work with them.”

More here.