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New "surveillance--proof" app, Silent Circle has been released providing an easy way for people to text and call people without anyone else ever knowing what has been said, including ISPs and governments. This app makes sure no one can eave drop on your personal business by using what's called encryption. Encryption is the process of changing data into a secret code, the secret code can then only be read by the device you are trying to communicate with. The encryption codes are randomly generated each time the app is used so it is almost impossible to crack the code. This app is can be used on iOS and is currently in development for other devices and platforms as well. Some feel that free communication should be a right, but governments must be feeling a little bit nervous about this app. I chose the tag "privacy and security" because this article is about how Silent Circle has given people an easy way to speak in a secure and private environment without any intervention from anyone else other than the communicators. In my opinion I feel that free communication is important, but people will abuse this through using this app to possibly deal drugs, plan terrorist attacks, or other illegal activities. Who knows, maybe even the government controls this network to monitor people who use it, but that is just a theory.

The article that I have chosen to share for week 4 is about IBM and their new services to help eliminate fraud and financial crime. The article interested be because around 3.5 trillion dollars are lost per year to financial crime and fraud through technology. While the software is being marketed to big companies it also directly involves us, the consumers. For example when Sony's PSN was down thousands of peoples accounts were hacked and had money taken from their accounts. This new software interested me because now people can feel a little more secure using online programs knowing that their information can be safer. It is a new time where many things are bought through the internet and with better security people won't feel as worried about their security

The article that I have chosen to share for week 4 is about IBM and their new services to help eliminate fraud and financial crime. The article interested be because around 3.5 trillion dollars are lost per year to financial crime and fraud through technology. While the software is being marketed to big companies it also directly involves us, the consumers. For example when Sony's PSN was down thousands of peoples accounts were hacked and had money taken from their accounts. This new software interested me because now people can feel a little more secure using online programs knowing that their information can be safer. It is a new time where many things are bought through the internet and with better security people won't feel as worried about their security

 Well basically this article is about having the sexual talk with your children. Many parents may be afraid to talk their kids about sex but hey you know you got to do it after a while eh? Anyways  the article also tells you to listen to a woman to help you talk to your children, I think you shouldn't really listen to this woman just do what feels right. If you read what this woman says its basically giving you some tips on what to say if you really don't know how to approach this situation. As a child i was thought about this subject in school and when it came to the talk it wasn't really that weird it was ok. This is important to know because children of our age will have to have this talk with there children (If they have children). Yes it may be awkward but you have to do what you have to do.

Sorry this is in German no Spanish translation will be provided. Have good day sinor

Cellphones play a huge factor in our everyday life.  Everybody uses cellphones nowadays.  However, the real question is, when should a child receive a cellphone?  Rather, when should a parent give their a child a cellphone?  Everybody is different, so they have their own opinion as to when they are ready to receive a cellphone/give a cellphone.  A recent report shows that nearly half of the teens surveyed say they can't live longer than a week without their phones, and 36% said they check their phones at least every 10 minutes.  Of course, these habits don't develop within a day of course.  An American research market company polled parents on what they thought the most appropriate age for a child to receive their first cellphone.  Twenty-two percent of parents polled said they thought 10 was the right age, while 43% of the parents fell within the 10 to 12 age range.  I find this ridiculous, because not even I have my own cell phone, nor will I be receiving one in the near future.   In today's society, a phone is like a miniature computer that you can take anywhere with you.  Phones were originally used for making phone calls and giving parents feel a sense of security knowing they can contact their kids whenever and wherever.  However phones can also be a whole set of challenges to a parent.  It is an Internet-enabled device with few parental controls, which could be one challenge.  It might also give a child access to inappropriate apps, the less-than-wholesome intentions of other people, from bullying to worse.   As a child's age increases, there comes many other challenges such as sexting or texting while driving. Personally, I feel the only time one can be ready for a phone, is when they prove that they are mature enough to handle such responsibility.  But that's just my side of the story.

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.

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. 

The new Nexus 10 is better than the iPad because it's lighter, it's thinner, it's easier to hold, and it has big loud speakers you can actually hear. The iPad feels precious and glass wants to shatter. The aluminum just wants to get scratched and dent. The Nexus 10 feels like it's built for working and playing. Its outer shell is made out of rubber so you can grip it. The edges are sloped so you can hold it in a variety of ways. The Nexus 10 has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 which is better than the iPads 2048 x 1536. The Nexus 10's wide screen is good for movies and is great for playing games because the speakers are on the front. The Nexus 10 supports multiple users on one tablet, the iPad doesn't. This is portable computing because the Nexus 10 has some many better things than the iPad and you get your money's worth if you do get the Nexus 10. 

The article I am sharing is about how worldwide governments are beginning to pay more attention on social media and using it for better and for worse. I chose to share this article because as time continues, life is becoming more and more technology based. It is interesting to see how the government now sees social media as a way to reach younger people and help boost their campaign strengths. The Canadian government along with the US government are now more involved in our online actions. This worries me though because it feels that the government is watching us, and monitoring our actions which makes me feel insecure which is why I found this article interesting.

I find this article very interesting. This article explains the possible use of biotechnology to transform punishment. Philosopher Rebecca Roache and her team have spoken about the use of a drug that could make a 10 year sentence seem like 1000. The drug disorients the persons perception of time. Although many parts of this punishment seem unethical Roache make some valid points stating "Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free? - the goal is to look at today's punishments through the lens of the future." I find this a very interesting point and in some ways i agree with it I think in some cases it can work but I have mixed feelings. Although it seems like a good idea I feel it is a huge invasion to tinker with someones brain without consent and I really don't think anyone would consent to this.

This article touches on a very important topic about whether technology is helping the economy and job markets more or if it is in fact hurting it. The answer is they do both. The New York Times among others write that tech companies have created relatively few jobs compared to industries such as GM. However TechCrunch argues that technology has created a lot more indirect jobs due to technology. There are in fact new jobs created such as social media marketers online. Most of these jobs are part-time because they are online and connect employers and workers with no hassle. Their conclusion is that there are millions of jobs created with a high demand but an unprepared workforce. The jobs that are needed now are more technology based than ever before and our economy is moving so fast in that direction that some skills that were needed in the past are no longer needed now. Therefore people are losing jobs not because there are not enough jobs produced but because our job market is drastically changing.  Some companies are allowing people to step into job positions with just a bit of online training or courses. Startups like General assembly are creating programs that are accessible to everyone and helps address the needs of the labor market. The final verdict is we need better training tools to quickly acquire high demanded skills and help workers adapt to the change that technology brings to the labour market. This article relates to economics and eLifestyle mostly because it has to do with how our economy is growing from the jobs created by technology but also how our workers have to respond to this change. This article deals with the changes that the labour market is going through now and how the increase in technology is now changing our lives. Some of our old jobs are being replaced by new jobs that not enough people are qualified for, so certain careers are feeling a job decline making it seem like technology is replacing workers. But in fact these new tools a

In the state of North Carolina, acts have been passed in order to protect students from cyber bullying. This state has also recently passed The School Violence Protection Law of 2012 to protect teachers from being bullied by their own students. Some teachers claim that they are wrongly accused by students who post rude insults and lie about them on the internet, but feels as if nothing can be done to stop the hate. This new law prohibits students from creating fake online accounts of any school employee, posting confidential information about them, and sending them junk or inappropriate websites to their electronic mails. As a result, any student who is caught will face serious consequences such as getting fined up to $1,000, being transferred to another school and sent to jail if he or she is found guilty. The consequences are quite serious since cyber bullying is a growing problem within and outside the school community and that it is considered to be a criminal offence. 

YES!!!! GET AT ME STUDENTS!! GET AT ME!!

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. 

Most of us know the movie "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" which is about a young boy who finds a golden ticket in his chocolate bar and wins a trip to the chocolate factory. Now Nestle is doing the same with their candy.  In the UK, some Nestle chocolate bars have GPS trackers on them but you will not know until a Nestle representative track you down to award you with a prize. The trackers in the selected candy bars cannot be seen and many wonder if it is embedded in the chocolate itself and the effects it will have on the body when consumed.  Others find this "Willy Wonka-style promotion" to be creepy knowing that someone is tracking you down if you purchased and opened a candy bar with a GPS tracker in it. Despite having the feeling that you are being watched, wouldn't it be a pleasant surprise when you are presented with an award for purchasing a Nestle chocolate bar?

In the previous six months, Instagram use has septupled easily surpassing twitter.  The app use went from nine hundred thousand people per day to well over seven million.  Instagram is based around a mobile app and has no website.  Before the evidence of Instagram's epic 6 month growth, Silicon valley were obsessing over mobile-first development.  Twitter, who started mobile and then became a website is being shadowed by Instagram.  Many other mobile apps have expanded and surged like Instagram but they all died out.  Instagram has not died out yet however, because people seem to really enjoy looking at pictures and sending up their own.  Instagram users spend an average of four hours on it beating Twitter's average of three.  Many people think Instagram is a bad thing and is for "attention seekers" but I think it's a good thing.  People can express their emotions and feeling through pictures and it's not Facebook so that's a win-win situation.  However I don't use it.

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.

Over the years, the internet has become faster and faster and as this has happened our patience has decreased. We have come to expect fast speeds and short loading times on the internet and anything slower is considered unacceptable. However, before reading this article I didn't realize how impatient we had really become when it comes to the internet. This article talks about the results of a study that showed that users were likely to give up on a video after only two seconds of loading! This had come as a surprise to me. To me, two seconds seems like only an instant, but I have to admit that I still am not willing to wait much longer than that for a video especially if the video is only 10 minutes or less. However, I find it interesting how two seconds of loading has become an issue, while we are still waiting through 30 seconds or more of advertisements before we are able to view our video. If we have already spent so much time watching an ad a couple more seconds shouldn't seem like a big deal. This article shows how our expectation of high speeds has affected us and our lifestyle. We have come to expect our video to load almost immediately and if it doesn't do this then it isn't worth the time. Our ability to wait is being altered. We're no longer used to having to wait for things that we want to watch, see or listen to on the internet. We've changed into thinking that if it doesn't load instantly, then it isn't worth watching. Of course, our patience should have limits. If it really is taking longer than the length of the video itself to load then perhaps it is time to abandon the video, but I feel that waiting only two seconds before moving on shows how impatient we have become with technology.

It has been over a year now since we heard about RIM's plans to release a 3G Playbook. We final get to see the Playbook.Much like its LTE sibling, it comes with 32GB of memory, and gets the same faster 1.5GHz processor too. (The original was 1.0GHz.) People say that they can't even compare it to the IPhone. Everyone knows how bad RIM has been doing and they feel like the Playbook will boost their earnings. However, statistics show that what RIM is hooping for is probably not going to happen. People are paying more attention to Apple's products more than RIM. Unless they come up with a better marketing idea. RIM will come to an end.

Last November, Google has removed the feature and option of people personalizing their backgrounds when they use the search engine on Goggle. But now personalized backgrounds are back! You can do this by just simply specifying that you want a certain picture to be your background.  This feature makes Google feel like your own and it's fun to do. Plus it adds a bit of flare onto the page instead of looking at a boring Google search page. You can also upload a photo if you chose for it to be your personalized background. 

The article is about a device that can get your vehicle to be connected to OnStar. This feature can be targeted to almost anyone who can drive because it is very beneficial to the owners. This device can automatically dial 911 and send emergency services your location if you are ever in an accident. This can also be used if there is a medical emergency, which I think is great for seniors or anyone with medical issues that drive. By having this in your car, it can make driving safer and makes you feel less worried. This device has already saved many lives and I think it is a great invention that can positively change our lives regarding the way we drive. This technology can lead to other inventions that can help save lives. The downside, however, is that there is a $15 monthly fee that comes with purchasing the product.

Social news website Reddit may soon have a feature where ads may be downvoted or upvoted, much like the content shared by users. This is one of few websites to currently have this approach with advertisements.  This is rather significant because if people are able to downvote advertisements that they feel are intrusive, ugly and downright annoying, and upvote advertisements that are funny, interesting and better, then we can see advertising companies change their tactics to make better ads for all of us. This can result in a win/win situation where companies generate real views on their ads and people are more inclined to buy their products, as opposed to being annoying by these companies and skipping over and trying to find ways around these ads by using extensions such as AdBlock.  If more websites use this feature then maybe people will start to like ads again, as they will see ads that they want to see, there may be a change in the advertising market where we will see an influx of more creative and interesting advertisements instead of the boring and tedious ones we mostly have today.