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In the movie Iron Man 3, Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., loses his entire life to a man named Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley.  Iron Man loses all his suits and his entire private life and starts hunting for who was responsible for doing all this to him.  When he goes on this quest he needs everything at his disposal to help him and keep him from losing his cool.  This movie is going to continue where the Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 2 Movies left off.  Mandarin is a classic Iron Man enemy so to have him in Iron Man 3 is just mind blowing.  Iron Man 3 comes out May 3, 2013.

Wemo Media has partnered with top animators from Avatar and Tron, the director of MIT's Media Lab and other high profile activists for an ambitious, underwater animation project called theBlu. TheBlu is a project to replicate the entire ocean system, from North America to Asia. It is part social network, part educational tool and part art project. The program will also have a feature where newly designed aquatic creatures can be bought and sold at theBlu's marketplace, which will feature common fish, user creations and exotic or rare animals tied to "philanthropic missions." Currently theBlu is in a closed beta.

Sony has released a new product to their Playstation line-up. Yup, the PS4. Sadly this isn't just it. For some odd reason, Sony has chosen to upgrade their PS3 Slim model to  an even slimmer model. Although the name "Superslim" isn't the most creative name, it sure lives up to it. It weighs just over 4.5 pounds, which is almost 3 pounds off from the original Slim model. Many critics have the same overall feel to it: It looks and feels terrible. This statement says to be influenced by the entire redesign of the SuperSlim model. This new model of the PS3, basically has the same internal hardware than the original PS3, despite the new outer look. Like the last two PS3 models, the SuperSlim, does not have the backwards compatibility with the PS2. Something that was long anticipated by the Playstation Fanboys. I hope Sony really gets his game up because I too, am a Playstation Fanboy, and looks up to Sony.

Wouldn't it be great to communicate with almost anyone in the world without having to learn a new language?  Microsoft has created a software that can analyze your speech, translate it, then play a new recording of your own voice speaking in a different language.  There are some downfalls however.  To reach a stage where the software is able to copy the user's speech and translate it, it would require the software to be trained with said person's voice for hours.  As well, the software may misinterpret the word, and could translate the wrong word, throwing the entire sentence off.  This software gets around one word in eight wrong. Regardless of the flaws, this software will benefit almost everyone worldwide.  People from all over the world will be able to communicate with each other no matter what language they speak.  This will help many companies worldwide as they do business with one another, due to the fact of how easy it will be to communicate with global companies. As well, it will be easier for people to look for jobs since they communicate with almost anyone, which means they can look for a job almost anywhere.   This software seems like it could potentially change the world as we know it today.  Once this software is perfected, it would be an amazing breakthrough in technology, seeing as how many companies would want to buy it.  Many people who don't work for big companies may also want to purchase this software to communicate with people on a global scale, and just to say that they can speak a different language.  To me this software would've been useful long ago, so I would not have to worry about taking international language classes.  Nonetheless, it will be exciting to see this software in the future.

*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

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.

Google is looking to expand its high-speed internet service, Google Fiber, into the city of Austin in Texas. Google Fiber is an internet service that offers ultra-fast Gigabit internet speeds with no bandwidth caps that no other provider in Canada and the United States offer for a price under $120.  This is because there are major internet service providers who create a monopoly over the entire industry keeping all their prices the same so they maximize their profits and offer sub-par internet connection.  With Google Fiber, these companies will have to provide better internet or they won't be able to compete, so many people want Google Fiber to expand as fast as possible over North America so that the monopoly is broken and people are given better internet.   This plays into eLifestyle because Gigabit internet connections with unlimited bandwidth will allow most people who pay for internet to pay less, have a more reliable connection and have faster speeds. This also plays into economics because Google Fiber will allow small businesses to use the internet without fear of high costs.

This article talks about the problems Facebook could have if it were to be breached by a hacker. Facebook is one of the biggest social networking websites to date and is the biggest holder of personal information, and yet they have been able to keep this information safe from hackers. Comparing to Twitter who had 250,000 accounts accessed by hackers, Facebook has done a remarkable job to keep our information safe, and although they have been able to do so for now, eventually they will have to face the problems of hackers. When you look at Facebook over other social networking sites like Twitter and Tumblr, there is a big difference when it comes to privacy and security. Twitter, for instance, is a more public social networking site with the odd soul that locks their account from the public. Facebook has privacy by default, which means Facebook has a lot more to lose if they were to get hacked. The physical damage that would pertain to us would include some of our photos and messages might be stolen, and the worst that could happen would pertain to credit card information, but Facebook would jump on and respond to these problems with password changes and other stuff. The real damage that would hit Facebook hard would be the psychological damage, and it would nearly destroy them. When something big happens in our society, the media jumps on this and will twist the truth in the story to give us, the viewers, the best story that will manipulate us into thinking an entire wrong. Facebook would be all over the media, whether it be on the radio, on the internet, on the news or in newsprint. The world would know about what happened, and fear would sweep across the globe.  People would start asking questions about what is safe on Facebook and if it is safe at all. Facebook already has a problem with people not being sure if everything is safe on Facebook, and this would just ruin everything for Facebook. No matter how much Facebook tries to keep its network safe, i

TL;DR

TL;DR

The main idea of this article is that a great amount of social networking websites can view everything on your account, deleted or not. This is a major breach of privacy because when a user hits 'Delete' they expect it to erase it entirely. This is not entirely true. This also applies to private chat conversations. As a major breach of privacy, this information is easily available no matter how hard you tried to get rid of it. This is an important article because it applies to everyone, including employees. This means that your employer can view any unsavory pictures or posts that you have posted. But is this a bad thing? This technology can be used to catch any criminal activity. Does this mean you should stop using private conversations? No, this means that if you are dealing with anything of a sensitive nature, use a phone.

Good Luck

This article disuses how some people (mostly teens) have been getting "addicted" to facebook. In this article a girl named Newton (not her real name) says that "I can go a whole day without Facebook," she said. "But I've never made it through an entire weekend." Although there are no statistics on "Facebook addiction" -- it isn't an actual medical diagnosis therapists say they're seeing more and more people like Newton who've crossed the line from social networking to social dysfunction. "Last Friday, I had three clients in my office with Facebook problems," said Paula Pile, a marriage and family therapist in Greensboro, North Carolina. "It's turned into a compulsion -- a compulsion to dissociate from your real world and go live in the Facebook world." Facebook can lower social interaction among teens, as well as lower their study time, and family time. I think people shouldn't take facebook this seriously. I personally do not consider facebook as such an important thing in your life. Facebook is supposed to be used to check emails, stay in touch with your friends etc. Not to waste countless hours on games and other apps on facebook, just going through people's pictures and profiles. Instead there is so many other things to do with your life.

It has been announced by Toshiba that their newest notebook is the thinnest laptop ever made. This is exciting but also a very impactful statement for not only just the world of technology but for our entire society. There has already been significant improvement in the size, weight, and portability of laptops but this new invention being known as the "thinnest" ever is surely a huge step for what the new standards of laptops will be in the future to come. I am certainly excited and I highly anticipate this new product due to the idea of in over a year's time, the way I use a computer, a huge technology aspect in my life, will be altered in a way where everything I need can be accessed and used in a thinner, faster, and lighter experience.

The Berlin Boombox is a stereo for any type of device that has a headphone jack. It is entirely made out of cardboard and it is easy to construct. The guy who came up with this was inspired by the boomboxes from the 1980s, he was looking for an appealing and affordable speakers but couldn't find any so he came up with his own. I think this is pretty cool but the only thing that concerns me is the quality of the sound, because it is cheap and the speakers are probably not that good either, the quality of the sound might not be as good as regular speakers. 

This article explains how a program created by scientists from the University at Buffalo, can allow a computer to determine whether or not a person is telling the truth in a conversation, strictly by accessing the speaker's eye movements. I found this invention extremely interesting and as I kept reading, it turns out a computer with this program was able to correctly spot various lies with 82.5% accuracy, but a trained human interrogator only manages a success rate of about 65%. Somebody who dedicated their entire life to studying human psychology and has done years of hard work and training in this subject was outsmarted by a computer who can do the same effort and work but in a better performance. These scientists really put the time and effort into creating this software to work as efficiently and be most successful as possible so just by the computer looking at your eyes, more specifically the movement pattern and the rate of your blinking, it can identify if you are telling the truth or not. This is a prime example of how technology is evolving all around us and how we are using our knowledge to further programs and devices to help and assist us perform tasks, be successful, and happy living our everyday lives. 

As the title reads, this article announces scientists discovery to recharge laptops and cell phones with soda pop and vegetable oil. Scientists created the first fuel cell that produces electricity with technology borrowed from natural biological powerhouses. Researchers believe, these innovative biofuel cells can transform sugar and fats into energy for running a variety of machines and devices. When further developed, these devices have the potential for replacing disposable and rechargeable batteries in a wide variety of consumer electronics and other products.This can be a revolutionary discovery if we actually start to use soda pop and vegetable oil as our energy source to run our electronic devices rather than batteries. This has an impact on everybody's life and ultimately the entire world because with so much of our lives consisting of using and working with various technology based devices, it will be significant in the way we save money and resources in helping our environment and lives but also being just as efficient and successful with our products as before. 

This article is about the company IBM. There's a massive telescope on the drawing board that hasn't even started construction yet, but when it's finished in 2024, it'll generate more data in a single day than the entire Internet. For scientists to ensure they'll be able to handle all that raw information, they need to start working on new computing technologies now. the project is called DOME

IPhone users should be aware of the fact that some apps automatically take everything from your photo Library. When you download an app it will ask you for your current location, you do not want to hit yes because it will take all your photos. This is the third Security Flaw that Apple Developers have to deal with. To keep away from having your entire photo library copied be careful as to what app you download and refrain from hitting "use current location" and messages asking for "access to location information in photos and videos" by avoiding this your privacy will remain private. 

"Mobile World Congress on Monday, Zuckerberg delineated some of his plans for moving forward with Internet.org, the initiative led by Facebook to bring Internet connectivity to poor countries around the world.  While Zuckerberg touted the altruistic vision of his company's goal to connect the next one billion people, it's important to note that the project isn't just for the sake of bringing basic services to those that don't have it, but rather bringing millions of additional eyeballs to Facebook and its advertisers.  See Also: Hey Facebook! Connecting The World To The Web Isn't Enough "[We are] making it so that we can increase the amount of up-sells to subscriptions when they're using these basic services," Zuckerberg said in his keynote. "They will come to a link that isn't included in the basic services package; a popup that says, ok if you want to consume this, you have to buy this data plan." Facebook is making a long-term promise to both data carriers and advertisers-Zuckerberg said the next one billion people to attain Internet access will not be as affluent as those already on Facebook, thus making it harder to monetize the company's services. Zuckerberg said the social network will subsidize Facebook, Messenger, and other services like weather or basic news and information, and then provide up-sells in applications to deliver the whole package-like a gateway drug. Those up-sells are where carriers and Facebook make money. "The reason why they're not on [the Internet] is they don't know why they would want to get access to it," Zuckerberg said. "[We will show] people why it's rational and good for them to spend the limited money that they have on the Internet." How WhatsApp Fits Into Internet.org Facebook recently spent $19 billion to acquire the mobile messaging application WhatsApp, an application Zuckerberg claims will be one of the few services to amass a billion users in the future. He claimed that, by it

Google has bought Nest Labs, buying it for 3.2 billion dollars about a month ago. Though Nest was bought by Google, it will still be somewhat independent. Nest will most likely be much more emphasized now with Google, though what Nest does is much different than Google. This topic relates to the tags of "Legal" and "Economics" due to the fact that Google has now bought Nest. Legally, Nest is now under Google who bought it for 3.2 billion dollars. Questions that I ask are, what things will Nest do now that it is under Google, and what new possibilities do both companies have? My opinion on this entire occurrence is that Google is becoming much bigger than ever, with so many new things appearing. Now that Nest is under Google's wing, it can accomplish many more things, though unknown what may happen.

Apparently, SNCF, a french railway company who shipped a lot of Jews to concentration camps and by proxy their imminent deaths, is being demanded to pay reparations to many Holocaust survivors in the US who are also trying to pass a bill that makes sure no taxes will go towards that company until they take full responsibility for their actions and that partnerships with American businesses will be blocked. SNCF has already made an apology but goes with the excuse of saying that they were coerced by the Nazis, much to the disbelief of the survivors who think and have evidence that what happened was concretely a business deal. This controversy is a very big deal as it brings up past wrongs that still need to be fixed even to this day. Those Holocaust survivors have been through hell and surely they should receive all of the compensation and more because of the terrors they have experienced which no one in their entire life should. Until this situation turns out, I hope that justice gets served.