Group items tagged

The above article (by Cyrus Favriar) details various interesting facts about the concentration of cellphone subscriptions on the planet - over 6 billion. At first the idea of 85% of the global population having access to a mobile phone seems outrageous, but 6 billion subscriptions does not necessarily mean 6 billion individual mobile phone owners. Many people living in third world countries will have multiple phones in order to take advantage of cheap calls within the carrier to and from a specific other party. Another interesting fact detailed in the article is that over 1/3 of the world's cellphone subscriptions is attributed to China and India, with over 2 billion subscriptions combined. A study from Gartner predicts that 1 billion smartphones will ship worldwide in 2014, and data from Canalys showed that more smartphones were sold in 2011 than personal computers. Between July 2011 and June 2012, Americans used 1.1 billion GB (> 10 000 TB) of mobile data, and over the last year Americans collectively spent 2.321 trillion minutes on the phone and have sent 2.273 trillion text messages. So, why should we be interested in all of these arbitrary facts? We understand that as smartphone prices become exponentially less expensive and other parts of the world gain access to data services, mobile broadband continues to grow at a rapid pace. There is a global trend from fixed-broadband to mobile-broadband subscriptions, simply because it is more cost-effective. As global bandwidth increases we can supposedly pump an infinite amount of data to billions of customers around the world. This relates to eLifestyle because it shows that although we talk about poverty and oppression around the world, one thing unites us: technology. This relates to Economics because of the decreasing cost of smartphones and the accessibility of cheap subscriptions becoming more prominent. This relates to the ICS20 class because as most of us own mobile phones and have mobile plans with various car

This article is about the Playstation 4.  It Lists the new technology added to the Playstation 4, such as its new graphics card, the new RAM, and  the new GPU.  It also talks about some of the new features such as the new "suspend mode", in which you basically put the gaming console into a "sleep-mode", in which it cuts out the start up sequences, and takes you directly to the game. Also, you now have the option to connect your PSN to your facebook.  Playstation has changed and updated their console very much from the previous installments, and because of this, Sony will have a distinct advantage in the upcoming console race that will come later this year.

Interesting. Very interesting. Not.

15 year old Amanda Todd was found dead in her home on October 2012. This event was due to cyber, physical, and verbal bullying. He committed suicide in her house. She had no one to support her in this process. She tried forgetting so she decided to move to different schools. The people in her school followed her and made things worse. She was alone. Imagine how she felt. Bullying is horrible and it should stop today. But, no one is making a change and stopping these people. In this video, Amanda Todd stated "I didn't press any charges, i just wanted to move on". In my opinion, she should of told her parents or the police that she was being bullied because this would made a huge difference. She wouldn't be depressed for her whole entire life. This girl is my age, and if I was being bullied.. I would of told at least a teacher or my parents. Bullying is bad, and it should stop.

Bullying, a serious problem that is drawing not only around schools, but also in social networks, which is known as cyber bullying. This article explains how a girl who made a single mistake lead her to a depression, getting bullied in school and online, then to cause suicide. Our generations should be bullies but rather, support those who are in depression. One devastating mistake can lead to many horrible things such as cutting or even depressants. Unfortunately, this happened to the girl, and she couldn't bear the pain of being bullied even when she moved to a different school and the bullying continued. We need to take a stand and stop bullying not just to stop pain but to prevent a heavier loss, suicide. This connect to the environment because through the internet, it uses were to verbally bully someone through social networking.

I know that a lot of people were talking about Amanda Todd. Fifteen-year-old Amanda Todd posted a YouTube video last month that detailed her brushes with online and offline bullying, and this week she was found dead in her home in Canada as a result of a suspected suicide. She first attempted to kill herself by drinking bleach but then went to the hospital and survived. After people heard about that they began posting pics of bleach, Clorox. So then she hung herself. They said, 'She should try a different bleach. I hope she dies this time and isn't so stupid.' They said, 'I hope she sees this and kills herself.'" I think it is so wrong when people make others feel bad that there willing to kill themselves. This is an outrage and I can't believe she didn't find help before she decided to kill herself. 

*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.

This article details a video released by Michael Bloomberg's (the Mayor of New York) office: the video compiles some data from a study on how to reduce New York's CO2 emissions by "The mayor's Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability." Those science nerds calculated that one tonne of CO2 would equate to a sphere with a 33-foot diameter, and knowing that New York as a city produces almost 2 tonnes of CO2 every second, the virtual simulation shows that over the course of one year, New York would produce more than 54 million metric tonnes of CO2; by those pre-determined facts, we would see that the entire island of Manhattan would be buried under a pile of those 33-foot diameter spheres. This relates to 'Environment' because as we progress in technology, our emissions of fossil fuel bi-products (especially CO2) increase rapidly. This relates to ICS20 because we often argue about the tech industry's impact on the environment, the most recent of debates being 'Cloud Computing' (which we all agree has a less minimal impact than a multitude of servers.) This video was released as an open forum to discuss the matters of New York's ecological impact, and since the video is quite self-explanatory, I recommend that you watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtqSIplGXOA.

hi minab

This article is about a man in Tokyo who sent many mass killing threats to a comic book event and many schools. Each threat would be followed by a riddle. The man hacked computers and sent messages to newspapers and broadcasters saying that details of a computer virus used to send the threats were strapped to a cat living on an island near Tokyo. Police found the cat and with it found a message that said that no more messages will be sent. Police analyzed the memory card and footage taken by security cameras and suspect that Katayama -a resident of Tokyo- was responsible for the hacking campaign. This article is a prime example of the dangers of computing and shows that the security of our computers is still not perfect and can be breached. I see this man's act as a childish call for attention and believe that this man should grow up and "get a life" as some would say. I don't understand how a grown man could have the heart to threaten the lives of many innocent children; I hope that there is retribution for such an offense.

This article is about how the next generation consoles will have the ability to interact with smartphones and tablets so that players can always stay connected to their games. Large publisher Electronic Arts has decided to share a few details about the next gen consoles. Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgenson quoted; "I do think once again without describing the new consoles, you've got to assume they're going to be highly integrated into peoples homes, and there will be a lot of capability for interaction."He also went on to explain that the new consoles will allow the players to interact with them not just through their controllers but also through tablets and smartphones. He quoted; "I think it's going to be an extension of moving from whats in the living room, to whats outside of the house. Even though it might not be playing on the console, it's connected to the console in some way.

This is an app where you can make the weather look much better on your screen which is available on iTunes.Not only does it show you the temperature or weather outside but it also shows you the hours of sun, temperature a the chance of precipitation.  You can click on one of the bubble and it will have an enlarged view of the particular data  with more details.  An example of this would be : tapping on a temperature bubble and shows high-low feel of temperature as well as wind speed and direction.  Each of the three screens show you a five-day forecast for each of the three metrics across the top. The colour and flow at the back of the screen depends on which way the weather is trending. The little wind direction points  the right way using iPhone's compass.

From the time social networking rose sharply in popularity, everyone has been sharing their lives to the Internet through pictures and statuses. Since then, users' news feed has been filled with things they really don't care about. Whether it be someone telling the world what kind of cereal they are eating or posting a celebrity's quote even though they have no idea what the quote means. Facebook's co-founder Mark Zuckerberg says that the amount of pointless garbage we see now will increase 1000 times more in the next 10 years. Yes that's right, more pictures of people making duck faces and statuses giving every detail of someone's life. This ties in with eLifestyle because even if we don't want to admit it, logging on to social networking sites to see what pointless information people are posting is a part of most of our daily lives. This daily ritual is good for giving us something to do to pass the time. However, our constant obsession is sometime placed before our education by people spending too much time checking on what their friends are doing therefore depriving them of the time to finish homework. I think Mark Zuckerberg's claim that the rate of sharing will increase dramatically is highly unlikely because once the amount of sharing reaches a certain point, social networking users might be fed up and quit using it because any posts that actually seem intelligent will be drowned out by other more dull posts. I personally don't like meaningless statuses like how someone just bought an apple at No Frills, which is part of the reason why I lost interest in social networking sites.

This articles talks about how a computer security attacking program called Cross-site Scripting (XSS) is being more popular among hackers. As we know, ISC2O which is us, spend our classes on the computers each day. This scripting partially relates to what we do since we have already learned basics of HTML and CSS programming languages. Not to mention, we're leading up to learning about Java Script which is one example of a scripting language such as XSS. There are probably a few of us that have had our own computers attacked(hacked) or put our own secretive information has been put onto the web. Many of us use social networks and sometimes, we display some personal information which can be retrieved by others through using this program. In addition, when we buy different products online, we put out some credit card details that can also be stolen and potentially be used. In addition, the number of cyber attacks can still rise as the holidays come by and eCommerce will increase and can cause more attacks. This relates to Privacy and Security this has to do with social networking as information that's displayed can be stolen and any other personal information can be taken.

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.

This article is about the next generation of Macbook Pro's. Multiple Apple resellers are reporting  some of the current models as out of stock, including J&R and Best Buy. In fact, they are not accepting online orders at this point. Traditionally, the retail channel dries up as Apple shuts down production. This cleans the distribution channels out of units as they get ready to introduce fresh models into the market. There aren't many details on the incoming MacBook Pro 2012, but it's safe to expect that they will be much faster- using Core i7 Ivy Bridge processors.

An anonymous source dropped some details to Kotaku. One is that the console is called "Orbis." Another is that it won't be backward-compatible with PlayStation 3 games. Finally, the big tip is that Orbis will have anti-used-game measures built in.

Whether you are thinking of getting the new Ipad or the Ipad 2, yo should do some little bit of research in the internet. In this article, there are lots of advantage and disaventage about the ipad2 and the New Ipad.The foremost argument for the new iPad is its gorgeous, high-resolution display. It's sharper and brighter, and offers more compelling color and detail than the display on the iPad 2. If you appreciate the difference in image quality between standard-definition and high-definition content, you'll want a new iPad.

Apple has been successful for many years and have been looking to expand their company into the medical devices and cars categories. With the help of audio engineer Tomlinson Holman, Apple has developed a device that can predict heart attacks by listening to the sound of your blood. Last June the company also announced that they were planning on bringing the iOS into vehicles and earlier this year we got a sneak peak of what these cars might look like. What could leave many people thinking is the thought of this new product making other car models obsolete and if it will take over the world like the iPhones have. The report on these new produces have been very light on detail but we do know that we can look forward to these new devices that can yet again change the world we know of today.

what's the connection to careers here?

This article explains about the benefits and disadvantages of building and buying your own personal computer (PC). All computers that are sold are made up of parts that have been put together, whether by factory or by a specialist. The parts inside help us to tell apart other computers and their parts. The article goes into detail that building your own computer allows you to pick the parts that you want, such as the motherboard, processor, or hard drive, whereas, if you buy a pre-made computer, the parts inside are picked by the manufacturer and it will take you a long time to find the perfect package at the right price. Lastly, the article teaches you how to build your own computer, so that if you choose that path, you will see the difficulty of it and see if you have the know-how to do it. In my opinion, I would build my own computer, even if it costs more money, because I want to install the parts that I think are right for me based on what I use my computer for (eg. gaming, video editing, etc).

Yelp's ability to provide detailed information and reviews of businesses is very impressive, and the free app gives you exactly what you need when you're on the go. You can quickly find out if a business is currently open or closed, get directions to the site, see photos of what's inside, and read reviews and tips about the business. And the design of Yelp's mobile app makes doing so surprisingly simple. Yelp is an Editors' Choice iPhone app because it makes life on-the-go better and more enjoyable. And the information it delivers is extremely helpful for anyone in an unfamiliar city.

Some details on the upcoming Windows 8 were revealed. Including an 8 second boot up time. in my opinion this is very important new feature because a common complaint about pc users (including myself) is a long boot up time.

Who doesn't love Facebook, twitter, and/or Google? Are you looking for work and love computers? Does this sound like a really bad infomercial? Yes, but that's not the point. there are, as expected, perks to working at Twitter, Google, Facebook, or even companies like LinkedIn and others. From yoga, to catered lunches, to dry cleaning, sports teams, vacation days, one could lean back in a chair and exclaim, "This is the life." Sorta. Let's see this INFOGRAPHIC for more details.

We now see what Steve Jobs was truly like, what kind of a man he really was. The authorized biography of the genius's life by Walter Isaacson quickly rose to the top of the charts after being released on Monday, and many are finding it hard to resist. This biography unveils many a thing about Steve Jobs that the general populace might not have known before. For instance, and this is really weird, Jobs believed that deodorant was useless, and his vegan diet would make him smell nice enough. Huh. Well, geniuses usually have quirks. But, after all the contributions he made to the world of technology and advancements, has it any meaning that he didn't use any deodorant? Weird, but still. Once again, so long, and farewell, Steve Jobs.