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This article (written by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai) is an interesting analysis of a general trend in the tech industry and demand for people with coding experience. The article states that now is the best time to dive in to coding because it has never been cheaper/easier to do so, with the introduction of Codeacademy - used in ICS20 - in early 2012. In less than 5 months, Codeacademy had stated that it reached over 1 million registered accounts, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Many web-based companies, even the titans that are Facebook and Google, are always looking for people with coding experience. Jobs in programming are also more lucrative than most jobs, even at entry level positions (15 of 21 San Fransisco Developer Bootcamp students were offered jobs in coding, with an average annual pay of $79 000.) The industry is severely lacking in female programmers as well, with only 1:10 ratio of women to men in the industry. This relates to Economics, eLifestyle and ultimately the ISC20 class because as the industry develops, there will be a higher demand for people with experience in coding; 2012 has been widely concerned as the best year for coding because many people who start coding now will most likely be secured for a positon right out of University, which can be very securing to young people who may not be sure of their future. Evidentally, the title says it all; if you are looking for a job, it would be wise to pick up coding because this a newly establihed market; most jobs in computers didn't exist twenty years ago so many people believe that coding will eventually become a societal necessary education, like math or grammar skills. This article shows how we are in a somewhat technological revolution, where we are creating new jobs where all the others are already full.

The article I'm about to review is called "Apple 'experimenting' with the curved glass smartwatch". This article briefly describes how the company Apple is experimenting with the curved glass smartwatch.  This curved glass technology, or as Apple calls it the iWatch, has begun developing around February 10, 2013. The iWatch will wrap around your wrist, and will act as a curved glass iPod.  The watch will connect via Bluetooth, and alert users for incoming messages. The iWatch also features a range of applications to use, including a whole range of applications that are targeted at cyclist. For example, the iWatch can be used to track the speed of which your bike is going, act as a GPS and record distance and pace data. In conclusion, this curved glass smart watch, or more simplistically, the iWatch, is hopefully the next big hit for Apple.

In the recent weeks, it seems to be the societal trend to chastise Apple Inc. for their mistakes, the most recent of them being their native iOS 6 'Maps' application. Earlier in the week, CEO Tim Cook published a letter on the Apple website apologizing for the poor quality of the app, saying that "At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment." However, this is not a first for Apple admitting their mistakes and apologizing; one example is in June of 2012, Bob Mansfield (SVP) expressed remorse for Apple's withdrawal of the EPEAT rating system, which ensured the company met an eco-friendly standard. They later recanted their actions and went back on to the rating system. Many people attribute Apple's recent downfall to the shift of power from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook. Apple has also come to fire for their general decreasing of employees per Apple store to increase profitability, their standalone podcast app and ultimately the widely regarded inadequate 'Siri', supposedly improved in iOS6. This relates to the tag 'eLifestyle' because when Apple limits the users experience by introducing faulty software and refuses to adress things because of pride, evidently the customers suffer. This relates to 'Environment' because of Apple's debacle with the EPEAT, and society's increasing desire for products that are eco-friendly, and Apple's supposed "higher environmental standards" that they operate under. Legally, Apple has actively been taking and giving lawsuits over the past years, including Samsung and Adobe (a lawsuit directly following Steve Jobs' choice to abandon flash on iOS devices.) From an economics standpoint, Apple seems to be making all the wrong choices, being that they abandon things that work (e.g. Google Maps, third-party podcast apps, EPEAT) and tries to 'reinvent the wheel' and many people argue that without the direction o

This article mentions the fact that Twitter now plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos allowing people to share altered images without having to use another source such as Instagram. Since most phones come with high-resolution cameras and many of the Twitter users use their phones this will be an easy way for people to edit and upload their photos. Especially with people or famous celebrities that use Instagram then share them on Twitter where more people follow them it will be easier and faster to just use Twitter for it all. This new idea has been hastened when Facebook bought Instagram. Twitter was thinking of buying a different photo service or application but when weighing out the cost they decided to just build their own filters. Twitter is also exploring the ability to upload and edit videos without using a third-party application like YouTube. This article has a lot to do with economics and the battle between two companies trying to get people to use their site and apps and not the other. In this case Twitter is really trying to become the most popular and important social networking site where people will be able to do anything on and it will be instant. They are changing what they once were to try to morph into Facebook because of the increasing popularity of Instagram and the fact that Facebook bought it.  I think personally that Twitter is making a good decision about the filter but i don't think twitter should add their own video player because it would change twitter and its purpose of being instant statements and pictures. YouTube is good at what they do and twitter should stay out of it. However with the whole idea of adding filters to Twitter you get the benefits of Instagram with the benefits of Twitter which might just keep them on top of Instagram.

Following Facebook's purchase of Instagram for almost $1 Billion in April 2012, it seems appropriate that Twitter would integrate something similar into their users' experience. 'Inside sources' say that Twitter is working on a photo-filter system that will be integrated directly in the site and mobile apps that hopes to bypass third-party services (such as Instagram.) While Instagram is a social network that focuses on social images with limited text, Twitter is renowned for its 140 character text-based updates with occasional images. An advantage of Twitter's supposed photo filtering system would be that there would most likely be a website equivalent to the mobile app, a problem that has plagued Instagram users who want a PC experience. As of now, there have been no official confirmations by Twitter, but the idea of a Twitter-exclusive photo sharing system seems interesting; although the market is currently saturated by Instagram, which can export images to other social networks, including Twitter. Legally, Facebook and Instagram may be able to take action against Twitter, depending on how similar their filtering system will be. This relates to eLifestyle and ICS20 because as social network users, we are always searching for ways to monetize our networks to one cohesive experience; another photo-sharing application seems arbitrary when there is already a capable system (Instagram.)

For a service that had such an artificially high demand, the tech industry has not really capitalized on Video Chat. When Apple unveiled their video chat service 'FaceTime' in June of 2010, many thought that this would become the primary standardized service used by all. In practice, FaceTime is a clunky system that is evidently less productive and convenient than just vocal or text communication. So why hasn't video conferencing taken off as the industry had hoped? The answer is most likely because there is no standardized system and the market is too saturated; Polycom Inc. hopes to adress this issue by introducing a Universal Video Chat in early 2013. The product (called RealPresence CloudAxis) monetizes all of your contacts from Skype, Facebook, Google Talk and other apps into one place - all hosted on a web browser. This is a very ambitious task and if it delivers on what Polycom says (with the "same security and reliability as enterprise systems"), then there may be some validity to the video conference service. This relates to Privacy and Security because when monetizing a group of services, there is a chance for data leak and possible identity theft; Polycom promises to adress all security issues in order to make a safe and immersive experience for its users. This relates to eLifestyle because companies and their consumers have been trying for the past years to create a universal video chat service that actually worked in order to establish a multi-faceted social network: it might be too early to tell if Polycom has something that will fulfill the needs of consumers. This relates to ICS20 because as a class, we are no stranger to multiple accounts that often times serve the same purpose. As consumers, we hope for a streamlined service that can connect all of our multiple accounts into one place, preferably on a browser. It will be hard for Polycom, both legally and economically, to convince all of these pre-existing video chat developers to allow Polycom to

This article is about a location-aware Field Trip tour guide app for iOS. You can now download it from the apple app store. Previously, the app was only available for Android, arriving back in September 2012. Field Trip runs in the background on your phone, triangulating position via cell phone towers, and only notifies you when "get close to something interesting." This can include anything local businesses, historical facts, landmarks, art, or culture.You select the local feeds you like and the information pops up on your phone automatically as you move about. You can discover thousands of interesting places/experiences that fall under the following categories: Architecture, Historic Places & Events, Lifestyle, Offers & Deals, Food Drinks & Fun, Movie Locations, Outdoor Art and Obscure Places of Interest around you. Field Trip can detect when you're driving and automatically "talk" about interesting places and experience around you. I think that this is a cool app and should be used while you go on trips so that you can see all the places around you and choose where you want to go. 

This article explains the fall of the leading company in smartphones. RIM experiences a significant decline in profits. I think that smartphones have risen in popularity and RIM is unable to keep up with their competition and it shows in their profits. I think that in order for RIM to recover from such a loss, they must provide an new and innovative feature to their products or a completely new product that will separate themselves from the competition. I think it is unfortunate that such a successful company experiences such a drastic downfall. This goes to show how unpredictable the world of technology can be.

you know when you wanna post a story on twitter, but ya can't because the post limit is no longer than 140? well now you sort of can by using TwitLonger, which will post the first 100 characters along with a shortened URL to the TwitLonger webapp. Many think this is a great idea, though others like me think it's useless because i don't have twitter .

This article is about being able to tweet more than 140 characters on twitter. I think this is very helpful because when i want to tweet an embarrassing moment or a new experience i am always limited because of the 140 characters restrictions. With this app it can increase the number, and people like me can tweet more about there life experiences..  

This article is about how Microsoft is planning to make a low-cost or free version of windows 8.1 for windows 7 users to upgrade to. The main goal of this from Microsoft, is to boost the number of people using windows 8.1 I think that this is a really smart idea because it will let someone test out windows 8.1 for a small cost or even no cost at all, without having to spend over $100 on the full version of windows 8. I myself like Windows 8 and use it on a daily basis, but I know many people who find it hard adapting to the new operating system. That's why with the free version, if the person likes it, they can buy it, if not, they can just re-install Windows 7. This is one of the few experiment like projects Microsoft are doing. They also plan to release low-cost, or free versions of their Windows Phone operating system, and also plan to merge their tablet OS, Microsoft RT, and Windows Phone together into one version.

For about a century, scientists thought that human noses were able to recognize 10,000 different odours. Although this has been true for a number of years, new research shows that we can actually detect over 1,000,000,000,000 distinct scents. That is over a trillion different smells. Leslie Vosshall and colleagues, who work at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, says that the 10,000 number had to be wrong. They considered that the human eye perceives 10 million different colours using only 3 types of light receptors, and the human nose has 400 different receptor types in comparison. Vosshall and her team created an experiment to prove this new theory, but because testing a trillion different scents would take eternity, the team crafted never-before-smelled scents composed of 10-30 odour ingredients. Each volunteer in the experiment smelled 264 different groupings of odours and then the team used that data to determine how many different scents the average human could identify. This is very cool new information that I have learned because it shows us that we are capable of so much more than we expect ourselves to be capable of. Considering that the whole existence of the human race could be wiped out by one single infection, this information reminds me that humans are too awesome to go into extinction.

On October 2nd a new gaming experience was released. NBA 2k13 hit the shelves after its long awaited anticipation, but what separates this NBA game from all the others? simply everything has been improved. For example the soundtrack on NBA is produced by one of the greatest and richest rappers ever Jay-Z. Gaming wise it has improved the controls a lot by making it more realistic. They have also added lots of retro characters that were not there from before. It has included lots of historic teams and most importantly they have even improved the graphics form before. Overall this game has achieved high rating from Gamespot, Metacritic and many more. This game has lived up to all the hype and big expectations and i recommend that everybody gets this game because it is so BLESSED.

As you all probably know, the new Apple maps available on iOS 6 is failing to live up to many expectations and requirements. Since coming out, it has had a lot of criticism and many apple customers were disappointed. There has even been a public apology from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who promised that Apple were hard  at work improving Apple Maps. In my opinion, it is embarrassing when such a prestigious company such as Apple develops something that receives this much criticism. I also think that this can hurt Apple's reputation, and even cause users to switch over to rival companies such as Samsung for phones. The big question, however, is whether or not Apple can match or even improve on the previously incorporated with Apple products, "Google Maps." Some say this is unlikely, as Google has much more experience in make map apps, and as Apple still has a long way to go until they can improve Apple Maps to a level where it could be considered decent.

This website article is for those who do not know what the movie Dredd is about, especially parents.  So here's the summary.  Dredd originated from the hand of John Wagner and his artist Carlos Ezquerra.  It's set in the future where nuclear fallout limits the population to live in Mega Cities.  The police in these cities are called Judges so that they are Judge, Jury and Executioner to save the hassle.  Parents would like this movie.  This movie is rated R/18 because of swearing, murder, drug use, sexual situations and blood.  The cast is amazing because they stay true to their roles.  The effects give you a very immerse experience.  The 3-D isn't really necessary but it absolutely mesmerizes you at certain points in the film.  This website article will answer most of your questions about the movie Dredd and if you still have questions then google it.

Glad you have your first post out of the way. Now, have you seen the movie? I'm interested in your opinion. Furthermore, what are we tagging this under? What's the connection to what we study as a class?

The article, by Anita Li, is an infographic on the evolution of Windows Operating Systems from 1985 and Windows users, as well as popular technology and software at the time of each release. The 1985 description depicts a generic male figure hunching over the machine-block Windows 1.0, with the subtext "Won't it explode if I press this button?" This highlights what a large impact the first computers and operating systems might have had - people possibly were afraid of pressing any buttons in fear that the the hulking brick might explode. But as we know, technology advances, and people adapt. The infographic shows the housings becoming smaller as hardware becomes more compact, and OSs become more advanced. It also illustrates the "first Internet experience" along with Windows 98, Google with Windows 2000, Skype and Solitaire with Windows XP, Facebook and the XBox for Windows Vista, and Twitter for Windows 7. The users also change, where Windows was generally used by adults in offices, it is presently used by a younger age group of teenagers for social networking and the like. As it was made out to be, I find this infographic very interesting. It shows a stark contrast between the first computers and computers today. Not only does it show the evolution of Windows OSs and its  users, it also illustrates the evolution of technology and how society has developed around it. Computers have become much more portable with the laptop, and their versatility is unmatched. Ultimately this infographic is an advertisement for the 2012 release of Windows 8 (dubbed "Thinner. Lighter. Faster."), but it does generate some thought, letting the mind ponder about past, present, and future technologies, and how society has and will adapt to the constant change. 

In a sort of infographic craze.. : http://visual.ly/

Apple is heading towards making a smart IWatch. Federico Ciccarese has developed a wearable device called the "ISiri Smartwatch" which is connected to the iPhone via Bluetooth. The ISiri Smart watch is connected to a wristband or ear buds and users can get the same experience as if they were using an iphone. This can be used for anything!  including directions to scores for a hockey game or what time your movie starts. This could be a huge game changer in the electronic industries because yo no longer need apps or even a phone to access directions or scores. Downsides might be that although it is great concept you will need some sort of data plan for this to work.

Google's strategy to free itself from Apple and Microsoft using their search engine, android for mobile, aspiring glass experiment, and now the Chromebook.  The Chromebook was well thought out and was constructed just as well as any laptop on the market. $1,400 may be a high asking price, yet majority of people would rather purchase a Windows PC or Mac over a high priced Chromebook

Vodafone warns that IPhone 4S owners should not upgrade to the latest version of the IOS. the reasoning as to why IPhone 4S users shouldn't upgrade to the latest IOS is because some user  that did update there IPhones 4S to the new IOS begin to experience problems connecting to the internet, receiving  text messages and phone calls, but there is no fear if you have upgraded as because they are already trying to find a solution to the problem.  

Codeacademy upgraded its website because it has partnered with a number of established web companies to offer a host of new lessons that concentrate on the basics of building with their specific APIs. An API is an application porgramming interfaces that allows developers to build applications with sophisticated feature more quickly and easy. Codeacademy now has lessons for building APIs from twitter, evernote, box and grit. The twitter API lesson teaches users how to read twitter from the code editor and make their own tweets from there. While WePay and Dwolla (codeacademys API partners) lets the learners send money from the code ediotr and create invoices, for only some examples. This update isnt only just for beginners, but it can also be for people that are a bit more experience that just want to learn new things.

As a social generation, we use various online 'social networks' to connect with others and share information (e.g. photos, text, videos.) But has anyone ever considered integrating one of these networks into a scholastic environment? This is exactly what Assistant professor of education at Michigan State University, Christina Greenhow has found in a recent study. While most say that social networks like Twitter are poisoning the minds of our youth, destroying their grammar and face-to-face skills, Greenhow finds that using Twitter in her class has allowed for more engaged students proven to attain higher grades. By integrating Twitter into some of the class' exercises, Greenhow was able to contextualize the material into something the students could relate to, "The students get more engaged because they feel it is connected to something real, that it's not just learning for the sake of learning." Twitter; something bored students would initially hide from teachers in class is now seeing some valid and practical applications in the classroom. This article relates to the tag "eLifestyle" because teachers are constantly trying to integrate web-based teaching into their classrooms in this constantly evolving technological age. This relates to ICS20 because we are one of the classes in the school on the forefront of technology, integrating web services such as Codeacademy, Diigo and even Twitter to enhance our learning experience. This article is not meant to give students excuses to wander off to Twitter during class, but to show teachers the validity in using a web-based social network to improve their teaching methods in the classroom.

Love this post. I've been thinking about this stuff for a while, as in - how do I work twitter into class activity? Any ideas?

This article (by Emily Price) details a few interesting facts surrounding the social media giant 'Facebook', particularly around gaming. We are all familiar with social games, such as Mafia Wars and Farmville, and Facebook has been recently seeing most of their income from in-game advertisements and in-app purchases. Facebook has seen a 13% growth in gaming users since September 2011 (226 million - 251 million.) Facebook now has over 900 million users, and over 500 million users are utilizing Facebook via a mobile platform. Facebook says that games grow on the network in five different ways: App Center, Notifications, News Feed, Timeline, and games users have Bookmarked. 8 out of the 10 top iOS games have Facebook integrated, and the top two categories of games users play on Facebook are 'Simulation' and 'Games and Puzzles.' This relates to Portable Computing because Facebook has recently taken large steps to improve the user's mobile experience, understanding that most of their core audience is on smart devices. This relates to eLifestyle because we see these social networks like Facebook integrating gaming into the user's social feed, allowing them to spend more time on the site. This relates to Economics because as games become cheaper and more accesible, we see that most of the gaming market is taken by mobile games; no longer do we have to go to an electronics boutique to purchase a $60 triple-A game, when we can buy the $0.99 version of said game or another digitally. Mobile games are the consumer conscious choice because you get the most "bang for your buck." This relates to ICS20 because although most of us say that our time on Facebook is deteriorating, we still are entrenched in the social gaming environment; this is demonstrated by Facebook's 65 million user growth in 2012 alone.