In WTW’s latest wrapup of technology headlines:

  • Wisconsin retail tech company offers to microchip its staff
  • Nielsen tries to quantify the Hulu, YouTube effect
  • Snopes meets $500K crowdfunding goal amid legal battle

The details:

  • Wisconsin retail tech company offers to microchip its staff

A Wisconsin company is offering to microchip its employees, enabling them to open doors, log onto their computers and purchase break room snacks with a simple swipe of the hand.

Three Square Market, also known as 32M, says it expects about 50 employees to take advantage of the technology. The chips are the size of a grain of rice and will be implanted underneath the skin between the thumb and forefinger.

32M provides technology for the self-serve break room market. CEO Todd Westby says in a statement that he expects the chip technology to eventually be used in air travel, public transit and retail.

The River Falls-based company is partnering with BioHax International, of Sweden, which according to Three Square Market already has chipped many of its employees.

  • Nielsen tries to quantify the Hulu, YouTube effect

Nielsen, the ratings service, announced Tuesday that it will begin to tabulate how many people get their live TV from Hulu and YouTube, an effort to provide a more accurate picture of how many people now watch broadcast networks by streaming them, rather than watching them on traditional TV.

Hulu and YouTube have not revealed how many people have subscribed for the live TV services that they launched in the spring as a counter to cable TV.

Subscribers can stream channels live on laptops, smartphones and elsewhere. They can also record shows digitally or watch them on demand. Both services cost nearly $40 a month.

Media companies base the amount they charge advertisers on the number of people who are watching at a particular time, and want to insure that online viewers are also counted as more people shift to using online streaming services.

  • Snopes meets $500K crowdfunding goal amid legal battle

Fact-checking website Snopes.com has quickly met a $500,000 goal set for an online fundraiser amid a legal battle with an outside vendor that Snopes says is holding it hostage.

Snopes started the GoFundMe campaign Monday and reached the half-million dollar goal about 24 hours later.

Snopes says Proper Media cut it off from advertising income, will not return control of the site, is inserting its own ads on it and is withholding advertising revenue. A lawyer for Proper Media, Karl Kronenberger, tells The New York Times that Snopes founder David Mikkelson didn’t properly cancel their contract and that Mikkelson retains control of the Snopes.com domain name.

Both sides have sued each other in California.