Group items tagged

This article is about how Best Buy will close 50 box stores and open 100 mobile shops. I found this really interesting how our society has changed so much. Now our most used devices are being replaced with newer, better, faster and smaller devices. It is interesting to see how times change. Best Buy will now change its merchandise to better suit the market. I cant imagine Best Buy without TV's.  

Microsoft this morning announced that it has closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, a deal that was originally announced back in May. They even made an infographic to showcase the importance of the deal completion. /sarcasm Other than that, not much news to report. As previously announced, Skype becomes a new business division within Microsoft, and Skype CEO Tony Bates will assume the title of president of the new unit.

Microsoft this morning announced that it has closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, a deal that was originally announced back in May. They even made an infographic to showcase the importance of the deal completion.

Elvis Impersonator take a step further with use of voice of control by using your Iphone, what can be done now with your Iphone now is that use raspberry Pi and siri to control things in your home such as opening and closing your garage door, changing the Chanel on television, opening or closing the your lights, checking your  security camera, and so on. Many users complain about this mainly towards on how much you have to pay, in order for you to get these features you have to have sensors around your house is specific places, and therefore you must pay a high price, a minimum of $500, many say that's its not worth it and better to get the lights yourself , and others say that this is the next step for technology and therefore making us live the future  

This post is about a $0.99 app on the Apple App Store. With this app (ImmediateSend) you can send messages or iMessages without closing the application you were using when you received the message. As many iOS users know, when you receive a message, you need to navigate to your Messages App and type the message. With this new app, a pop up appears, and you can answer all of your important messages a lot faster. This relates to Portable Computing because in this day and age it is very important to get things done as fast as you can. This app is very handy and can be very useful if you are using another app and do not feel like hitting the home button. I feel that it is worth paying $0.99. 

This post is about making videos viral. Currently, people have to work hard, be creative or create something different in order for it to be noticed on the internet. This parody predicts that it will no longer be the case in the future. The video promotes the company "Buyral" that can ensure that your video has a huge amount of views, (goes viral) without you even trying to make a good video. It seems ridiculous, but as Brian Barrett points out: like all good satire, it is perilously close to becoming a reality. Many times, a viral video goes viral because it is a great video. Can you imagine if anyone could just as easily give up a few bucks and have an internet smash? Some companies are already promoting videos on Youtube and other websites, buy you can clearly read the caption that says "Promoted." If this parody were a reality, you would have no way of knowing if it truly earned those views, or if somebody with no imagination paid a website to get his or her video views. I believe that this defeats the whole purpose of a video becoming viral, and it relates to eLifestyle because it would definately influence our daily lives. When people go on youtube and click on the "most viewed" section, they are expecting to find something that is worth their time. Furthermore, if someone is searching for a video, for instance, on making apple pie, the first video that will come up is the one with the most views. Instead of getting a video that earned the views, people will likely get an advertisement from a company that makes apple pies or such, that paid an amount of money to obtain those views.

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. 

Early in the afternoon today, a clever developer managed to sneak a Game Boy Advance emulator into an innocent looking app named "Awesome Baby Names". The secret emulator is activated by a series of taps on the touchscreen inside of the app. Once it is activated you can play your classic gba games just like you did in 2005. Apple was quick to catch this security breach as it was only in the App Store for twenty something minutes, but in that time many people including myself managed to download the app. This kind of sneaky activity from developers happens very seldom, but when something is smuggled into the App Store, it is usually very important. As stated in the article, it is a very easy process to unlock the emulator from the app, but getting the games and the BIOS onto the iPhone is the hard part. You must first download a program that lets you access the phone's file directory, then you must find the app's directory and drop the relevant BIOS and game files there. I chose the portable computing tag for this article because it deals with mobile technology and exploiting it to run handheld gaming software. This idea is not knew and has been around for a long time, but the idea of hiding the identity of apps and smuggling them into the App Store is a new idea. Apple is updating their security daily, but clearly couldn't spot this "child naming app" and make it out for the emulator that it was. I chose the privacy and security tag because Apple has a high priority for the security of their ecosystem and operating system, but clever people can still find ways to bypass this and get unidentified files into the operating system. I believe that Apple must keep a close eye on how they approve future apps into the app store because one day we may see cydia disguised as a senseless app make its way into the app store. If this happens, Apple with really have some explaining to do!    

This article is basically about physcist developing a system in witch they use the suns energy to destroy or redirect asteroids from space. The earth at this period of time can easily be destroyed but a random asteroid from outer space. Asteroids are roughly the size of five football flieds long. The earth has recently dodged two asteroid threats on its own but may not be so lucky in the future. This is why Physicists Philip Lubin of University of California, Santa Barbara and Gary Hughes of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo started working on the DE-STAR proposal a year ago. Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids, an exploRation (DE-STAR). This system will use the suns solar energy to power a laser beam that can be used to shoot to destroy or redirect future asteroids that have been predicted to come and are a threat to human survival. For example asteroid 2012 DA14-a medium sized, 150 ft (50 m) rock weighing 143,000 tons-was closing in on us. They knew that it would miss us too, by 17,200 miles (27,700 km

This article is very interesting in many ways. Many people admire the movie Spider-Man and people would love to have something like this so called spider-sense robot suit. The suit is really cool because it uses many microphones to hear in coming objects, the suit then detects where this noise is coming from and pushes you away from the object. This is great for people that are blind or slow because the suit will move you from harms way and save lives. The suit was tested a number of times and it has a 95% success rate which is really good for the first of it's kind. I am really excited for this cause it brings us one step close to super human like characteristics.

This article explains that Microsoft's ever popular successful software application, Skype, is to hire 400 people in staff, to be able to expand it's presence in the UK and Europe. Skype has between 600-700 million users around the world, which comes close to Facebook's 850 million, and this video chat sensation is increasingly becoming more popular and interested by people of all ages using this newest form of technology for a variety of reasons. Skype has become a world wide hit and people of all ages are using in all places for various reasons from anywhere for travel or for just plain fun while communicating with friends. The fact that Skype is hiring more workers and staff members to expand their company just demonstrates how well and successful this software is doing, how far Microsoft's peer-to-peer network has become, and what Skype has for instore for us but also it's global effect on our world in the future. 

This article represents a tool called the AutoHotkey. This is a downloadable program that will help you create shortcuts for system tasks in Windows. This tool can assign hotkeys such as shutting down or restarting your computer, adjusting volume, and opening/closing the CD drive, etc. I find this very convenient for people who use their computers everyday because it arranges a more faster and easier use for system task. It is also very useful for people who are lazy and don't want press buttons on certain areas of the computer or monitor.

Because of social media and texting 24/7, our minds have become accustomed to emoticons and what they represent. For example, our brains now register the colon - dash - close - bracket as a real smiling face. This phenomenon has been studied by scientists and this break through is not only interesting but also dawns upon the fact of how people right now are beginning to be taken over by technology. If just seeing a few markings of type makes one remember a face, then what more weird things will we be able to connect with text to in the future? It's not just smiley faced emoticons people register as well - there are thousands of emoticons that people now understand are pictures that are smaller versions of a bigger idea such as, OTL representing a person kneeling in failure and even, (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻, to represent the action of flipping a table.

Titanfall the most anticipated game of 2013 and 2014. Ever since it was revealed at E3 there has been craze over this Microsoft exclusive game. For some this game looked like a Call Of Duty because the owner of Respawn Entertainment made Call Of Duty 4. This game is a fresh look to the FPS (first person shooter) genre as the titans are powerful but not overpowered. As for my experience with the game I have participated in the closed beta it is the greatest FPS game I have ever played in my life. All I can say is on March 11 I will be calling my titan in!

This article is about a free to play MMO game called War Thunder. This game is currently is in an open beta phase. For now it only supports air battles while land battles at the moment are in a closed beta stage and navel battles are still nowhere to be seen. This game is based of WW2 battles, vehicles, and weaponry. I have been playing this game for a week and have to say I'm really impressed with both the smooth graphics and gameplay. I think that it's a great game but eventually if you are not really into these types of games or, are not good at them it can become a little tedious. Finally, I really like how this game is getting a lot of attention because it will attract many gamers to start playing.

Today steams family sharing has become available for everyone. Family sharing allows people in a close vicinity to play most of each other's games. Also while a game is being although there are some exceptions like monthly subscription MMO games. I believe that this is a really good and inspiring concept. This allows siblings and friends who come over to you house to play the same games while only one person owning it. This is giving similar freedom you have in console games where you can play together using one disk. Although this is still early and really buggy, I myself tried to share games with my brother and while his computer found my laptop shows "no other local accounts found". All in all being released so recently I am impressed.

This article was about the leading android app on the Google store to be a scam. It was suppose to protect your phone from malware and spyware, it costed $3.99. Virus sheild just changed the logo from an "X" to a check mark with no effort needed. Many complaints have been sent it saying that this app did not work. Making the price high and having good image previews, and a good description will make people want to buy it because they trusted the rating's and reviews. The app ended up not working, and with other 10,000 downloads, the people that made this scam, made a large amount of money. Google took this app down, and has their eye closely on malicious apps, to prevent this type of scam from happening again.

For the longest time we have all felt very safe while on the internet. Even with feeling this security, we should be more cautious with what we put out on the internet because there has been a bug lurking around in the most important security measures for years. Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) has been keeping your browing page secure and safe for numerous years and is a huge part of the internet and thankfully it is still working as it should. The problem that we have been experiencing is a software library called OpenSSL has a hole in it that has been there for years called "HeartBleed". OpenSSL allows people to get the protection from TLS/SSL easy and fast and has worked fine just like TLS/SSL but because there has been a minor coding error, malicious people can abuse different versions of OpenSSL and grab information that should originally be secured by TLS/SSL. The main problem that everyone can understand is that all of your personal information is being opened up and placed into the hands of someone who should not have the information. The other problem that this "HeartBleed" has is that the attackers will also get to see how the site that is taking your data indentifies. Not only can they see recent transactions but they can look back at old transactions that have already happened. The worst part about all of this is that none of the attackers leave a trace.Since they leave no trace, it is hard to tell how many websites and people have already been effected by the "HeartBleed". While sites try to fix up the problems it is recommended to change all of your passwords and to keep a close eye on your credit card statement. This bug is a huge problem for our society because absolutely no one is safe because there is no way to know if you've been attacked. The article says that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft hasn't been infected yet so that is at least good. I think that everyone should always be careful with their personal information

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.

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.

Picture in, your mind, an app. Now this app is probably popular, one you downloaded and is from the apple app store; this, however, could be changing soon. Although the android market place has been number 1 in downloads for a while now, they've been lagging behind in profit, but that gap is closing. The market place, already receiving 45% more downloads than the apple app store, is becoming more and more popular. Expanding markets in developing countries is aiding the expansion. Ultimately, android's reasonable pricing for phones is contributing to a huge boom in phone and app sales. Although this is the case, the market place is still far behind the App Store in revenue. The app store is currently making apple 85% more than the market place does for android, but those numbers are changing. One day soon, Android may topple apple's dominance in the app world and take its place as king.