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This post is about an idea that Facebook is testing slowly in more and more countries as time goes by. Facebook is considering introducing "Promotions" to personal posts. What this means is basically that you can pay $7 to move your posts on facebook higher up in the news feed. This increases the chance of your friends seeing your post as it will be higher up in the news feed for a longer period of time. This is a test that is being used on facebook users with less than 5000 friends in the U.S. I find this strange, wouldn't it make more sense for facebook to test this feature on people with a higher number of friends? Moreover, I think that this is a bad idea coming from Facebook, because $7 dollars is likely more than the average annual revenue per individual user. For a multi-billion dollar company such as facebook, I think this is a greedy and unnecessary move on their behalf. They have more money than they could ever need, yet they want to charge $7 dollars to promote a post...This could work for business posts, however, to me it seems absurd for an individual to pay $7 dollars  to promote their post on facebook, which will likely only last near the top of the news feed for a couple of hours maximum.

This article talks about how Google is rumored to release a second-generation Nexus 7 tablet. There is said to have more screen resolution, a thinner bezel and an unspecified Qualcomm CPU.  There is no info or pricing, and Google has not confirmed any information yet.  If this information is accurate, then this will be good news for Google.  The first generation Nexus tablet had huge successes, and its predecessor should share the same success.  Also, Google has chosen to go with Qualcomm, a digital wireless telecommunications producer.  This will allow the Nexus 7 Second-generation to save power,  as they are going to drop the current Nexus 7's NVIDIA Tegra 3.  This new tablet sounds very promissing, and will help the company make a large profit while being user friendly.

This article is about how to change the computer background in to an Android mode of background. These are the requirment and instruction that you will need for this transformation. 1.Ice Cream Sandwich wallpaper 2.APPOWS2010 3.RocketDock 4.Ice Cream Sandwich Icon Pack 5.Rainmeter (Minimal Bar v2.0 (by Vit-Ok on deviantArt) (LEXIS) (Simplesentencethree) (GoogleBar) 6.Roboto TTF font family pack 7.Windows 7 Start Orb Changer (Aftersounds start button Win 7)

The new Firefox 7 uses 50% less memory than Firefox 6 and was released faster thanks to a faster release cycle. Firefox released firefox 7 just 6 weeks after Firefox 6. Firefox 7 stops wbsites from resizing your windows, which has a negative effect on add-ons. But Firefox doesn't seem to worried.

*Disclaimer: Article above contains profane/vulgar language This article details the findings of the blog 'Jezebel', who compiled a series of racist, anti-Obama tweets following the U.S election, and 'Floating Sheep' who trended those tweets and imposed them over a map of the United States. Using the knowledge of geo-coded tweets and the Twitter search bar, Floating Sheep was able to trend racist anti-Obama tweets from November 1-7. They used an 'LQ' algorithm which compared a state's ratio of racist to normal tweets to the entire country's ratio of racist to normal tweets. States with an LQ score of 1 were on par with the country, while those 1 had more racist tweets on average. After trending the reassuringly low 395 tweets, the study found (unsurprisingly) that higher LQ scores came from South-Eastern states, with Alabama at 8.1 and Mississipi at 7.4. This relates to Privacy and Security because Floating Sheep used geo-coding to find out where the cruel tweets originated from. This relates to eLifestyle because the internet harbours some of the most ignorant/hateful people who make callous remarks without realizing everything that you do can be and often is tracked. This relates to ICS20 because we promote a positive online environment and we frown upon things like racism and vulgar language; the very opposite of what these people mentioned in the article are portraying. If there is a silver lining to this study, it is that in this technological era, we are able to publicize ignorance and judge/analyze those who advocate awful messages.

There was a lot of hype around the jailbreak community when the evasi0n iOS 6.1 jailbreak was released on Monday. It saw 1.7 million downloads on the first day alone. This jailbreak works by exploiting "bugs" in Apple's iOS code to allow users to write data to the kernel. This article relates to the legal tag because over the past decade, jailbreaking has become a very controversial topic and some people consider jailbreaking unethical or illegal. This article also relates to the economics tag because jailbreakers are pirating App Store apps which digs into Apple's and app developers' profits. I was once a jailbreaker myself, but have recently learned that developers work hard to make their apps and they deserve the credit and money for them. Overall, this article shows that the jailbreak community is still going strong and there are still those people who like pirating apps and taking profit away from developers 

This article is about how the operating system Windows 8, has passed 200 million license sales. Within the first six months of windows 8 release, it passed 100 million license sales. However after that, the progress stayed the same and there weren't any spikes in sales. Windows 8 is doing slower at its sales than windows 7, as windows 7 passed 240 million sales after its first year. The reason for the slowdown in sales is the general PC market. People haven't got used to the tablet style computers with a touch screen interface. Microsoft is slowly going to change that and bring back the keyboard and mouse UI. By the time April 2014 hits, windows 8 should have a new 8.1.1 update.

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.

The smartphone wars are taking a turn for the worse. Last week both apple and Samsung companies made patent infringement lawsuits against each other. Apples lawsuit of 2 billion dollars against Samsung is for use of the slide-to-unlock feature, auto word correction, universal search of the phone, and Internet and background syncing of data. While Samsung's 7 million dollar lawsuit against Apple is for the use of remote video transmission and on digital imaging. I believe that apples case is a little childish compared to Samsung's especially with the part about the slide to unlock future. Samsung's case seems to be about more important matters like using its camera and the remote control patents. I personally would like Samsung to win because I prefer their products and customer service over Apple's.

Why isn't apple releasing an 7 inch iPad. They say its just isn't apples way. They don't want to change the price just because its a smaller iPad so they rather keep their iPad stay the same size as it is.

The new OS; Windows 8, is bringing on a lot of excitement, but many people are not too happy with the changes made, myself included. Many people miss the desktop screen, and dislike the new start screen. Others don't like the tiled look and are more used to that of windows 7. There are many other problems and this article describes how to fix all of them. First of all, There is the desktop screen problem. Many of us used to place all our most used programs on our desktop screen so that when you log on, you will have quick access to all you needs, but now all of that is gone and replaced by the start screen. Fortunately, you can bring them back with Start8 (which is easier to use but costs $5) or Classic Shell (which is harder to use but is more customizable and is free). The cool thing about Classic Shell is that it can fix many other things, such as turning your windows explorer from a ribon-ified mess into a usable file browser. you can also fix this problem with Xplorer2. Another problem is that you cant view your videos without buying an attachment to windows media player, but you can fix this with free programs such as VLC There are many other peeves i n widnows 8 that this article helps solve. In conclusion, I feel that knowing that these problems can be fixed will lean alot more people towards windows 8

In order to prove that the Windows Phone 7 flagships phone are faster than any other phone, Microsoft has a new marketing campaign where they invite you to bring your own phone in and pit it's speed against one of Microsoft's phones. Someone has actually managed to win this challenge but was not awarded her prizes because the employees at the store gave her a sudden excuse about needing to have widgets open that tells the weather in two different cities in two different states. She was later issued an apology and challenged to a rematch.

This article tells the readers about 7 apps that were released this week. The seven apps are Pair, Bump Pay, Fuze HD, Babbel forAndroid, MTA or Merifian, Paper, and Wonders of the Universe.   Pair is an app for many of those who are in a long distance relationship. They allow couples to create a private timeline, swap photos, share videos, and their location. The app also has "thumb kiss" feature that vibrates the phone when they both touch the same part of the phone. This app is available for iPhones. Bump Pay is an app that allows you to pay others by simply "bumping" your phones together. You would pay them using PayPal. Fuze HD is an video conference app that allows others to have a video chat with up to ten people on at once. You could  also send text, images, and other media during the presentation. Babble for Android is a language app. It has over 3000 vocabulary words, sounds, images, speech recognition and a personalized review manager for multiple languages. MTA on Meridian is a app that you can use to browse art of particular line or plan your own transit system art tour. Paper is a new app that allows people to draw diagrams and sketches and shared them with others on the web. Wonders of the universe is an app that lets you explore space with graphics and visuals.  I think that this article is interesting because it tells me many of the apps that I didn't know about.

Apple, with a potential injunction shutting down the company's iCloud service there over infringement of a Motorola Mobility patent being pegged as a $2.7 billion risk to Apple.

The company behind Animal Planet has bought a two-year-old network called DogTV. The channel broadcasts 24/7 content for dogs with three categories: relaxation, stimulation, and exposure. The target market for this channel is for owners that feel guilty about leaving their pets home alone. The idea is not new either, a channel called Puppy Channel was launched in 1997 and still has a website today. In August, DogTV closed its distribution deal with DirecTV and DirecTV estimated that half of its 20 million customers are dog owners who would be interested in the channel. DogTV has gone with the HBO style charging their monthly subscription $5 on the channel and $10 for online streaming. If the owners of the dogs are interested in watching the channel as well, the channel may add advertising to it. Dan Fox, Discovery's senior vice president of corporate development, says that DogTV is a very natural fit and is lacking big-name stars. This is good because unlike other very popular shows, the channel will not have to pay a lot for salaries. I think this is a great ideas for dogs who have to stay home because their owners are not allowed to take them out. It will keep the dogs busy as well as keep them entertained and stimulated while the owner is out doing whatever they need to do without having to worry about if their dog is ok.

Samsung has today announced an update to the smallest slate in its Galaxy range called the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. The new device will be available from October and boasts a number of major improvements over its predecessor, including a super speedy 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and HSPA+ with download speeds of up to 21Mbps.

Mozilla upgraded Firefox 6 with Firefox 7, six weeks after it came out. It uses 50% less memory and it is much faster. Much more memory and speed improvements are expected to come in Firefox 8 and 9.

Even though Microsoft acquired Skype in May for a whopping $8.5 billion, an obscure application known as Tango will give power to video calls on several upcoming Windows Phone devices. Starting with coming preloaded on the Windows Phone 7.5, the Mango, sometime in the next few weeks. Are we seeing some competition for Skype? I think so, and it will be interesting to see the outcome of this battle.

With each new generation of smartphones, dropped calls and battery life issues are still an issue, the reason is partly because antenna technology has not changed very much. Scottish scientists have changed this. They spent 7 years to create a cellphone antenna quite smaller than a coin. The Sofant Technologies team claims that this new antenna is more efficient, finding signals faster and using up less battery life. The smaller something is in technology the less it has to travel therefore speeding the device up. The antenna also takes advantage of the full potential of LTE and 4G connectivity. Sofant plans on licensing its designs to smartphone manufacturers all over the world.  I chose the tag of portable computing because this article is about antennas, a vital part of a cellphone. This new antenna will affect people who use cellphones, which is a large amount of people in North America. In my opinion I think this new antenna is long overdue. The fact that antenna technology hasn't changed much over the years is pretty surprising. This new antenna is a step in the right direction for smartphones. 

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/