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In this article, the global state of the current smart device market is addressed with its top two consumers being the U.S. and China. As of February 18, 2013, China has officially surpassed the U.S. in its number of active iOs and Android devices, a year after being named the fastest-growing smart device market in the world. According to estimations, China will have a 16M lead in smart devices installed on the U.S. by the end of February and their market will continue growing exponentially putting them far ahead of any other country. China's purchases in the smart device business, makes them an important group of interest for smart device companies such as Samsung and Apple, and the choices of the people will have a great impact upon the market. Especially in the competition between iOs and Android devices. In recent studies, the Android has nearly 75% of sales in China. This is not very comforting for the iOS since it might fall behind in competition due to consumer behavior in China's economy.

When we're looking for new smart phones we often look at things like speed, convenience, size and other features. When we see all these new smart phone products in stores we don't really stop and think about who made it. All we see is this polished, new phone and that's all we ever try to see. However, this article forces you to look past those pristine products and see the hidden reality. This post shows the rankings of various phone brands based on their impact on human rights, animal rights, the environment and other ethics. Out of a possible score of 20, all the brands fell quite short with the highest score being 10.5. It brings up the various human rights violations of different companies and makes you wonder why such successful companies like Apple are still setting such a low standard for labor conditions. Living in our comfortable first world country, we don't see all the human rights violations and abuse that occurs in other countries. I was surprised to learn that in a Nokia factory, many people were hospitalized for lead poisoning after being told that lead wasn't harmful. The lives of these workers are put at risk every day, as they work to create our smart phones. This article makes you think a lot about our world's reliance on technology. In our country, we only see the positive side of technology. Around the world though, there's a whole other side to the story. People work in dangerous conditions and are abused often while they create our smart phones. It really makes you see these products in a whole other light. After reading this article, I see more when I look at a smart phone. I wonder what happened to the people that made this phone or how they're living now. Our world is changing because of the introduction of technology. It has made our life so much easier, but we have to remember that this can sometimes come at the cost of another human or animal's dignity and sometimes even their life.

It's been less than 200 years since the birth of photography and in those years it has evolved a lot from the first camera to the smart phones that we so often use to take pictures today. This article maps out the evolution of photography throughout the years, and what it has come to be today. Cameras and photos have come a long way from what they first were. Even the digital camera, has become a smaller part of our lives as the phones with built in cameras had been introduced to our society. In fact, about 741 million mobile phones worldwide now have some photo capability. We no longer look to digital cameras or computers to edit and share our photos. All of those capabilities have been added to our smart phones. It has now become very easy to simply snap a photo and share it on a social networking site like instagram or facebook. In fact, Facebook has 10, 000 times more photos than the Library of Congress. Many of us have lost the need for digital cameras. Mobile photography is the latest evolution and many are experiencing the shift. Our phones are always with us and it provides us with the perfect camera when a picture perfect opportunity is right in front of us. 91% of smartphone owners take a picture at least once a month while only 73% of digital camera owners do the same. Personally, I've also experienced this shift. I used to have a digital camera and would bring it with me on field trips and special occasions. It was great to have, but now that I think about it before I had my smartphone and only used the camera I missed out on all the photo opportunities that I had in my day to day life. I only captured the big events and even when I took those photos, I always got a little lazy when it came to transferring them to my computer and sharing them with friends and family. It usually sat on my camera for a while before I finally got around to doing it. With my smart phone, I am simply able to snap a photo and share it without losing a mome

nt. I find it very convenient. Our lifestyle with technology has made our day to day life easier for us and now it is making it possible to capture our day to day life, wherever we are. To me, this move to mobile photography hasn't killed photography, but transformed it.

LG released its newest refrigerator called the Smart Thing.which as you can guess, is a "smart" fridge. The fridge can communicate and interact with your Android phone to complete or help complete some of its tasks. This fridge can tell you what is in the fridge, scan barcodes of food products, suggest recipes based on the user's preferences and lifestyle, notify expiration dates, and count your calories. All these features can be done on an Android smartphone. Everyday, technology is improving itself to be better than its predecessor and allowing us to live simpler, more automated lives. This fridge is bringing computing into the kitchen by allowing us to do more things with our fridge other than just store food. We can now have our questions like "when will the eggs expire?" answered automatically by this new fridge. It appears as time goes on, the implementation of computers into our daily lives will be more and more prominent. The LG Smart Thinq is an amazing appliance because it is redefining the refrigerator entirely by making it so that modern fridges should soon have built-in computers. Yes this fridge is expensive at about $4500, but over time this price will drop to something more reasonable and also influence other companies to make fridges just like this one. Though this is a cool fridge, I still wonder who would buy a $4500 fridge.

Only a few months after the Samsung Galaxy Gear was released, Samsung has just announced that they well be releasing two new smart watches; the Galaxy Gear 2 and the Galaxy Gear 2 Neo. The watch comes packed with a 1.63 inch super AMOLED display and a 1GHz dual core processor. You will be able to track your health with fitness apps, control your TV with the watch-on application, answer phone calls, listen to music and many more feautures. I personally would get this because the new technology of smart watches interests me because you don't have to pull your phone out all the time to answer calls or to change the song you are listening too. Sooner or later we won't even need a phone to pair a smart watch too, all you will need is the watch.

The Smart Remote on Samsung Galaxy S5 features an infrared sensor at the top of the phone which can control your TV and other home electronics. The app, Smart Remote, requires a little bit of setup but is super useful for reducing the amount of controllers you have lying around and make you like much easier, not to mention its much easier to keep track of as well. The app also allows you to check what shows are on at all times and from anywhere.

We all know that voice recognition software exists having been created by companies like Apple, some of us thought that advanced technology would end at a computer recognizing words and responding to questions. However that is not the case. A company called Kimera Systems is developing a system that figuratively reads your mind. This isn't a software that literally reads what you are thinking and performs an action based on your thought since that would require an implant into your body. Rather, Kimera's system consisting of the Salience Engine and DigitalMe (or DMe) Smart Agents. The Salience Engine collects information from its users and uses this to understand human action better while the Smart Agents perform actions based on the user's preferences and the user's previous actions. For example, if a user sent out party invitations to friends and then went out to buy groceries, Kimera's system would automatically download a shopping app for the user because the system understands the user is going to the grocery store to buy select food items. This system, should it be implemented into future phones and devices could very well change society for the better and for worse. This system could make people's lives better by allowing decisions to be made by the system for the user so they can worry about other things while knowing Kimera's system will take care of tasks for them. This could negatively impact society though because since the system automatically makes decisions for the user, if they begin to rely on this system and lose their sense of judgement rendering them unable to decide without this system. Though automated technology is the dream of many, is an automated life really what we want? From this new technology Kimera is creating, other more advanced automated technologies could arise and eventually we could end up losing our humanity since everything we need to do is done for us by a computer. We would end up like the humans in the movie Wall-E who were

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.

This article talks about new gesture that could be used in addition to finger touch in order to have more options easily and launch new apps using your knuckle, fingertip, fingernail and more. A trio of Ph.D. students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh managed to modify a Samsung Galaxy SIII to accept input from all three different touch variations, and tell the difference between them. It accomplishes this with the help of a vibration sensor and software that listens for the acoustic differences that come with the different types of touches. A man named Harrison has already started a company called Qeexo to start selling this tech. This vibration sensor can easily be added to any smartphone's "guts" and the software added too.   This article has a lot to do with portable computing because different companies are always coming up with new innovative ways to make smart phones more "smart". This is one of those things that a new company called Qeexo is doing. They are looking to improve the options and speed of using a smartphone for example instead of opening up a note pad by going into the menu and clicking it with your finger, you can use the "shortcut" of taping your knuckle twice to open it. This can also be used in gaming, option menus etc.  The main point is that companies are always changing making technology much more natural and easy to use. I think that this is a very good idea and over time if people hear about this depending on how much this would cost to upgrade it may become big and even become a pre-installed feature. 

First bookmark about how smart a dog is.

Many people these days do not consider refrigerators as interesting pieces of technology. when you walk into your local Best Buy, you go look at the phones or the TVs, not the fridges. Ever since CES 2010 though, fridge technology has come a long way. New "smart fridges" have come out ever since that perform many tasks such as tweeting and running applications such as evernote. Samsung is now releasing a new fridge that carbonates your drinks for you. They call this technology SodaStream. This article relates to the portable computing tag because fridge technology has come so far that there are fridges now that run full versions of Android OS. This article also relates to the elifestyle tag because fridges have come from being appliances that barely keep your food cold, to pieces of technology that can do so much more. overall, I am impressed with fridge technology and will probably buy a new smart fridge in the next 2 years

A Taiwanese company, Polytron Technologies, has developed a new smart phone that is completely transparent. Although this device is a mere prototype, it is a promising look into the future of smartphone technology. It consists of all the features of current smartphones, such as SD card support, speakers, a microphone and battery, but the clear display is what has many people in awe. Polytron calls this new technology Switchable Glass technology which allows the phone to look completely opaque when not in use and transparent when powered on. This technology functions based on the behaviour and properties of liquid crystal molecules in certain conditions. In the coming years we will most likely see this technology being introduced into smart devices if it proves to be a success. No longer will smartphones be thin, black or white rectangles, but rather they will be transparent works of art. In the coming future we may be thanking Polytron Technologies for their brilliant advancement in smartphone technology.  

The new LG smart series come with a cool feature called voice control. You can use it to search for things anywhere like the internet. All you have to do is talk into the remote and this amazing technology will do everything for you. There would be less work involved because you wouldn't have to go on your laptop or computer to search something up. All you would have to do is turn on your t.v. and talk into the remote and your answer would come up. This new feature on the LG tv is very convient for many people and i'm sure it's going to be popular in the near future.

This article gives people an idea as to what to do with those old computers we have lying around our houses that we don't use anymore. Although, there are many of us out there that have newer computers as opposed to what we've used five or so years ago, it is still a good idea to want to put those outdated pc's to good use. I think this is helpful because for those that still use the old kinds of computers and don't want to have to buy the new, super expensive ones, this article will help give an idea what to do with them.

Well this article is pretty interesting, because it explains how to renew an old ugly horrible computer, into a good computer that can make a huge difference. One of the rules was to upgrade your hardware which is a hard thing to do, but it can boost certain type of areas in your machine. It is a smart thing to do, but it is really worth paying for all of this, just to make your old ugly computer fast, and good again? I prefer to just buy a better computer. Instead of using faster programs, upgrading hardwares, etc. But these rules are really smart, and useful for people that like to use old computers.

Yota Devices is a smart phone phone company, based in Russia that is making waves in the cell phone community with their innovations in smart phone hardware. The yotaphone was released last year in asia and europe and quickly made a name for itself by offering not only staple specs we have come to expect, but also innovation for the screen. Its front screen operates as anyone would guess, so the real area the phone stands out in is shown when flipped over. The back screen is a low-power e-ink display that in the phones first incarnation was mainly used for display and lacked touchscreen capabilities. Now, however, in the yotaphones upcoming successor: the screen has made the jump to a full touch panel, allowing it be used to answer calls, receive and dismiss notifications and be used to play games that don't require the flashy capabilities of the front screen. This kind of innovation in cellphone technology is of paramount importance and the biggest step forward since the original iphone. The potential is amazing, allowing for new software to utilize the second screen, and making cellphones even more accessible and useful to the smartphone community.

Samsung has put out the Galaxy Gear "smart watch" with what is said to be 3 days of battery life. The new mobile operating system, Tizen OS is used in this. Along with the Tizen OS there is a 1.63-inch touchscreen, 1 GHz processor and up 4 GB of storage, and it is compatible with Samsung smartphones. The Tizen is hoped to be used in multiple other devizes, from cars to TV's. The article relates to hardware because this may be the future of our equipment, possibly all connected and controlled with maybe one or a few things. It can be said that this is what everything will be like, from our tools to our everyday items. My idea of this is that these new things that are popping up that will make our lives "easier" will bring everyone to become more and more lazy. Before electronics people actually went out to have fun, but now everything we do, or at least almost everything, is in the "comfort of our home".

Google is making a smart contact lens for people with diabetes so they know their blood pressure and level of sugar in their blood. I think this will be a new innovation and this will change the way we look at technology. This is a new level of technology.

linux is getting its big break. many big name companies in the entertainment industry are starting to take notice. samsung is going towards realeasing a linux based phone platform which will be called tizen. tizen will be made for smartphones, notebooks, netbooks, smart tv's and last but not least tablets. as for the smart tv's, fujitsu, and panasonic are looking towards investing into linux.

The future is now, and that future is wearable tech. Yet another big player has announced its release date of its 'smart watch', and this time its time for the gaming crowd to be excited. Sony has just announced the release time of their new wearable tech, the SmartBand SWR10, and (in a rare instance), both athletes and smartphone geeks have something to look forward to. The SmartBand is a sleek wrist bracelet that offers features for athletes, Xperia users, and pretty much everyone else with its three major features. The band acts as notifier for phone activity, as well as having non-tech applications, namely various kinds of health monitoring, and something called Lifelog (basically just a facebook feed of your phone... which you can already do with facebook) .While it is good to see a new player enter the smartwatch arena, nothing in this release is new, I would argue the main selling point may be its selling point; price that is. All of the bands features have been done before or can be accomplished by separate 3rd party applications, and you gain nothing by collapsing them to one item. Save its rumoured cheap price of $150, the SmartBand is nothing special, nothing new.

A company's biggest asset is its 'employees'. Without them, a company cannot grow, thrive and expand in new frontiers. Employees with intelligence, confidence, drive and integrity can take a company to new heights and help garner greater business success.