Group items tagged

This article is all about phones. more specifically, which phones is the right one for you. The article has paragraphs explaining how there are so many phones and so many options and uses a flow chart to help you find the best phone that has what you are looking for. This can relate to me because when i was going to buy my phone i didn't know if i wanted to go with Apple or Samsung. I didn't know if i wanted a simple high quality phone with apple or a more customizable phone with Samsung

Our generation is filled with tons and tons of people who use the huge social network, facebook. Some of us realize that our parents are trying to jump into our social lives by creating their own facebook account. Some of us are really embarrassed if our parents add us as a friends and peek into out social feed. It's a good way for parents to try and dig deep into their children's lives but it can also cause a bit of trouble in children's lives because it can embarrass them if their parents peek into everything they do with their friends. This is related to privacy and security because basically this article is explaining how the parents are using facebook to dig their way into their children's social lives. this relates to eLifestyle since this can show how parents are accessing through facebook to get a closer relationship with us while invading our llives.

Some people today, act in one way in the real world but once they go on the internet and social networks, it's like they're a whole different person. This article explains how we communicate in different ways through social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. When you're feeling down or not in the mood it doesn't hurt to just vent to someone on the internet rather than freaking out and acting crazy. If you can socially act online in a positive way, it gives a reciprocal, so maybe you can receive some back that's positive. The internet should be a reason for use to jump out of reality because it gives a certain impact on ourselves. this article relates to Portable Computing because through out phones we can also access social networks which goes back to jumping out of reality and acting like were some bad person but as this article says, that's not a good excuse.

Many of our teachers tell us clearly when we have a project or an assignment that involves research, we should try to avoid Wikipedia as a source. I think it's because of the fact that Wikipedia makes it easy to find information and that most of the information is starting to be more accurate instead of being fake information. In my opinion, most information that's on Wikipedia is almost no difference from the information found in textbooks. This article explains that Wikipedia should be used if the assignment is to find information and summarize it to something simple because Wikipedia simply shows you a summary that can be referenced in classes. This is related to being legal because mainly, copying information from something site like Wikipedia would be plagiarism. Although in my opinion using Wikipedia as a way to gather any information and constrict it into a small summary of that information, then it should be used.

This article tells how the constant evolution of technology has enabled students to teach themselves without the need of a teacher. One way technology has been proven  to help students teach themselves is when the MIT Media Lab delivered tablets to schools in a remote village in Ethiopia. With only the tablets, the children taught themselves the ABCs and even found their way around restrictions MIT put into the tablets. Another way students can teach themselves with technology is proven is by an 11 year old girl  from Pakistan that passed a university level class even after the government blocked Youtube which was the source of the videos she used to study. Thanks to a Portugese professor who uploaded the videos to a website the girl could access, she was able to complete the course. Our access to technology influences us by allowing to be (mostly) self-sufficient since we do not have to rely on the help of teachers completely to learn. With this, students can get homework done more easily and be up to date on lessons taught in class. I think that students cannot teach themselves solely on technology since it isn't that evolved yet. I think this is a good thing that students cannot learn only with technology because in school, it is easier to learn things when someone else explains it to you, promotes more social interaction, saves the jobs of teachers, and makes it harder to procrastinate. I believe that eventually students will be able to learn at home with only the Internet because of how fast technology evolves and how much information is stored everyday.

Today is the first day of spring. There is this thing called "Shooting Challenge" and you have a whole month to shoot a photo of spring. It has become a bit of a tradition and some results are just unreal and breath taking. This contest ends April 15th. The are some rules to this contest though, submissions need to be your own, have to be taken this year, explain the story and technique behind the shot, email it to contest@gizmondo.com and include 970px wide image.It also reuqires one submission per person and proper subject for email.

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 about how Apple's stock prices have decreased by 2.7%. In fact, $290 billion has been wiped off Apple's value since September. The article explains that the last time, Apple's stock was so low was when Steve Jobs had passed away. The article also talks about how investors will only pay about $9 for a dollar profit, whereas for a different company such as Standard & Poor's 500 company, they will pay $15. This shows that Apple's investor loyalty is falling. Investors no longer see Apple as a "safe" investment, which is why they are no longer willing to invest in Apple. Investors are not sure of the direction that Apple is going, which is why they are reluctant to invest and take a risk.

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.

        In this article it talks about companies trying to trademark the name "Python" for their server products. The company "Veber" is trying to trademark exclusive right to use Python for software, servers, and web services everywhere in Europe. After briefly explaining what the company is trying to do the article teaches people how they could help stop this from happening.      The article tells the readers to send emails tops psf-trademarks@python.org telling them how they use Python and send them any published information mentioning the Python language. By doing this they can prove that Python the programming language is used everywhere and not only the language the name as well. With this they can top Python from becoming an exclusive trademark.

This article i found is very interesting. It explains to us how people will begin to see many jobs being taken by machines and robots. An example of this given in the article is that Google is making self driven cars which may seem good but many jobs need people driving the cars themselves, like truck drivers and taxis. If vehicles could drive themselves many if not all of the people that drive vehicles will be out of work. Another example is the car insurance companies will charge more for vehicles that are driven manually which will make other companies either have this new technology on there cars or risk going out of business. The article also states that Moore's Law is now going faster and we can see these changes happening sooner. This new change will be great for many computer programmers or similar jobs but other people will have trouble finding a jobs

This post is on cracking Wi-Fi WPA passwords with "Reaver." Many people know that cracking a WEP password is fairly easy, so they use the more bulletproof WPA security protocol. Reaver is a program that exploits a security hole in wireless routers and can crack most routers' passwords with relative ease. First off, you will need the BackTrack 5 Live DVD. Download the Live DVD from BackTrack's download page and burn it to a DVD. Next, you need a computer with Wi-Fi and a DVD drive. Lastly, you need a nearby WPA-secured Wi-Fi Network. Using four steps you can hack into a WPA Wi-Fi Network. Step 1: Boot into BackTrack, Step 2: Install Reaver, Step 3: Gather the Router's information, and Step 4: Crack the WPA password to the Wi-Fi Network. Now I will explain how you can protect against Reaver attacks. Since the vulnerability lies in the implementation of WPS, your network should be safe if you can simply turn off WPS (or, even better, if your router doesn't support it in the first place), however Reaver may still be able to crack your password, even with WPS manually turned off. You could also set up MAC address filtering on your router (which only allows specifically whitelisted devices to connect to your network), but a sufficiently savvy hacker could detect the MAC address of a whitelisted device and use MAC address spoofing to imitate that computer. The good news is that there is a way to surely protect against Reaver. You can get the open-source router firmware DD-WRT installed on your router. Reaver has been tested on routers with this firmware and it was not able to crack the password. As it turns out, DD-WRT does not support WPS, so there's yet another reason to love the free router-booster.

This article is of interest to me because it explains what the best processor is for gaming. I have always loved playing video games and I am constantly on the computer but now I can do both. Learning about which processor is best for gaming is important and significant for someone who wants to play video games on the computer. Choosing the right processor is key to have the best gaming experience possible. This starts from choosing a processor that is in your price range, has powerful graphic features, but can also fulfill your needs of playing fast, at a high performance, and without it taking too much space on your hard drive. Overall, I have a better understanding about gaming on the computer and I hope to use this information to start to game on the computer in the most efficient and fastest way to play.

This article explains how the tablet is becoming increasingly popular and the sales have nearly doubled from last year. The tablet offers quite a lot of features and the design of it appeals to many people. If i had the money to get one, I would definitely buy a tablet. It is no doubt that Apple dominates with the sales of the tablet. The portablilty and the uniqueness of the tablet results in high sales. As more features begin to be added to the newer versions of the tablet the sales will also increase too

This article explains how it is practical that Facebook bought out Instagram. Facebook is very popular when it comes to sharing photos and Instagram brings the latest and most innovative ways to take photos. So, it is only right that Facebook and Instagram team up. I agree that the partnership between Facebook and Instagram will be beneficial for the both of them. Separately Facebook and Instagram are quite popular but by partnering together it will definitely boost both their popularities. Also, I think it's good to see that Facebook is doing something more than just changing their layout every couple of months.

This article explains and acknowledges this week in Google. Google is improving its technology through their web browser, mobile devices, and in their social network. This is good for Google as a industry to attract more consumers to their products and this is really a step in a right direction for them improving and being recognized as one of the elite brands and companies in all fields of technology. I am happy for the success of Google and I hope they can continue to strive and do their best to satisfy their users with more faster and more efficient products delivering a high performance at every use. Also, I hope Google can continue to add and maintain a significant importance to the development and increase of their products throughout our evolving world of technology. 

This article explains the fall of the leading company in smartphones. RIM experiences a significant decline in profits. I think that smartphones have risen in popularity and RIM is unable to keep up with their competition and it shows in their profits. I think that in order for RIM to recover from such a loss, they must provide an new and innovative feature to their products or a completely new product that will separate themselves from the competition. I think it is unfortunate that such a successful company experiences such a drastic downfall. This goes to show how unpredictable the world of technology can be.

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. 

This article explains how Microsoft is attempting to attract users to the browser IE9 (internet explorer 9) by mocking the previous versions of IE. I think that if they must promote any of the browsers they might as well promote the latest and most updated version of it. Since internet explorer has another browser that has more features and is more useful than IE9 they should focus on attracting users to that browser. Also, IE10 has features that can compete with google chrome, firefox, and safari, whereas IE9 does not. In my opinion I find this is a very poor marketing strategy on Microsoft's part and it will not get them any further in terms of higher user rates for internet explorer.

This article explains how Dell, one of the largest and most successful PC makers in the world, has given up on a possible creation of their own smartphone. Dell expressed that they tried multiple times to produce a product that would be successful in the US smartphone market, but with a number of devices facing some serious bugs as well as a problem with slow speed, the company did not see positive results and they decided to trash the idea and process once and for all to focus on other opportunities. Dell is not getting out of the mobile device business altogether thanks to sales and success with devices sold in Asia and Japan, and the company will continue making low-cost phones and tablets for sale in emerging markets. With smartphones becoming a very successful and poplar device that many customers are increasingly taking an interest to, this setback has to worry or concern Dell because they are not able to compete will other huge named brands and companies in the mobile device bushiness. Dell has had it's highs and has had success over the years with products and devices, but maybe this is a wake up call that they don't have the money, resources, and high praise that more well-known companies do and this could be a huge factor to why the amount of success, more specifically in the phone industry, hasn't been enough to be a top contender in the mobile business altogether.