Group items tagged

Everyone knows about the election coming up this fall. It is down too Obama and Romney. Everyone knows that Romney and Obama are competing very heavily against each other. However, study shows that Obama is actually the more influential on Twitter than Mitt Romney. Obama has 20.3 million followers and has 8,000 times more than the average Twitter user. However, Romney with 1.2 million followers, has a pull of about 800 times the average user.What else do we know about Obama and Romney's Twitter followers? By matching the candidates' followers to over 60 public online and offline data sources, Peek you was shocked with the interesting statistics. A higher share of Obama's followers are female - 49% of Obama's followers compared to 35% of Romney's. Obama's followers also skew much younger than Romney's, with 24% of the president's followers under age 25 to 16% of Romney's.Interestingly, only 55% of Obama's followers self-identify as living in the United States, compared to 89% of Romney's followers. That's perhaps an effect of being a sitting president as opposed to a candidate and former governor. Obama's got a higher percentage of Floridian followers than the average Twitter user, while more than typical numbers of Ohioans follow Romney. To me I think the reason they both use twitter is so that they can get more votes for the elections and become president.

Many of us think of Apple as this giant in electronics. Over the past decade, Apple set the market for smartphones, ultrabooks, and tablets. However, in the past couple of years, Apple has begun to fall off. Rather than being the huge 'juggernaut,' Apple has become a follower, forced to play catch up to other companies including Google and Amazon. Evidence of this are tied to the recent releases of the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7. Apple's response was the iPad Mini, when they realized consumers enjoyed smaller tablets. Before that was the iPhone 5, in response to people wanting larger phone displays. Apple Maps is a blunder that both iOS 6 users and Apple pays for. Apple was slow on the draw to join in on changes to the market specifications. Having controlled the market for the past decade with the popularization of smartphones, tablets, and retina display, Apple was simply unprepared to react to these changes. Apple still has their innovation and secrets hidden in R&D, but the fact of the matter is their most recent releases contain ideas from other companies' progress. This relates to elifestyle because our generation uses these products in our daily lives. Most of us do not remember a time when electronics did not make up a substantial part of our lives; when Apple was not a prominent consumer electronics company. This reminds us that power does not last indefinitely; innovators become followers, and companies fall. The next big thing in electronics may not even exist yet. 

This article is about how Twitter has introduced a music service to it's 200 million users. Twitter recently bought We Are Hunted,which is a service that recommends music based on social media, changed the service, and incorporated it into Twitter. This music service gives the user suggestions for songs to listen to. It does this by scanning the service's posts for music references. After signing up, a user is sent to a page with many charts of artists and songs. The #NowPlaying list/hashtag collects songs that have appeared in Twitter posts among the people that a user follows.Other lists/hashtags show what music is popular everywhere on Twitter. Artists' accounts highlight the music they follow, allowing their followers to see the type of music they listen to. This new services influences our lives in a positive way because now we as users are exposed to different types of music that we may not know existed. Also, we could share our music and show the world what songs that we like and which we don't. This service influences our lives in a negative way because some people may not like a certain type of music, and may find a certain type of musician offensive. For example an anti- feminist group found Rick Ross an offensive spokesperson for Reebok because of his songs. If a person in politics decided he/she liked Rick Ross's music and shared it on Twitter, this may spark an uproar with the media and this anti-feminist group

LG made the first 55-inch OLED TV which , and it will cost $8,000. The timing jibes with what we heard at CES, but it's the first solid word we've heard as to what the future of beautiful television is going to cost us. Eight thousand. That's a lot of money-more money than most people have to spend on a TV, by a longshot. But it could've been a lot worse! Samsung's current top of the line 55-inch LCD TV runs around half that-and it's using old, old technology. OLED will be out of reach for almost everyone, but, like everything else, it'll slide cheaper, and cheaper in a (relative) hurry. Especially when LG, Samsung, and the rest realize nobody can afford this. It realtes to the course because its technology.

In the recent weeks, it seems to be the societal trend to chastise Apple Inc. for their mistakes, the most recent of them being their native iOS 6 'Maps' application. Earlier in the week, CEO Tim Cook published a letter on the Apple website apologizing for the poor quality of the app, saying that "At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment." However, this is not a first for Apple admitting their mistakes and apologizing; one example is in June of 2012, Bob Mansfield (SVP) expressed remorse for Apple's withdrawal of the EPEAT rating system, which ensured the company met an eco-friendly standard. They later recanted their actions and went back on to the rating system. Many people attribute Apple's recent downfall to the shift of power from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook. Apple has also come to fire for their general decreasing of employees per Apple store to increase profitability, their standalone podcast app and ultimately the widely regarded inadequate 'Siri', supposedly improved in iOS6. This relates to the tag 'eLifestyle' because when Apple limits the users experience by introducing faulty software and refuses to adress things because of pride, evidently the customers suffer. This relates to 'Environment' because of Apple's debacle with the EPEAT, and society's increasing desire for products that are eco-friendly, and Apple's supposed "higher environmental standards" that they operate under. Legally, Apple has actively been taking and giving lawsuits over the past years, including Samsung and Adobe (a lawsuit directly following Steve Jobs' choice to abandon flash on iOS devices.) From an economics standpoint, Apple seems to be making all the wrong choices, being that they abandon things that work (e.g. Google Maps, third-party podcast apps, EPEAT) and tries to 'reinvent the wheel' and many people argue that without the direction o

A WARNING TO ALL TWITTER USERS! A Twitter phishing scam is spreading via direct messages. The DM will say "There is a rumor/blog going around about you (LINK) might want to read it." Do NOT click on this link. If you do, every single one of your followers will be spammed with the same message, and your account WILL be compromised, and you WILL be hacked. If you click on this link, whether by accident or because you don't listen, change your password immediately and often. Delete messages you never sent, and look out for links like the one you were spammed with. Revoke access to any suspicious applications. Follow the step-by-step guide provided by Twitter on what to do if you click on it. DON'T CLICK ON THIS MESSAGE!

This article mentions the fact that Twitter now plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos allowing people to share altered images without having to use another source such as Instagram. Since most phones come with high-resolution cameras and many of the Twitter users use their phones this will be an easy way for people to edit and upload their photos. Especially with people or famous celebrities that use Instagram then share them on Twitter where more people follow them it will be easier and faster to just use Twitter for it all. This new idea has been hastened when Facebook bought Instagram. Twitter was thinking of buying a different photo service or application but when weighing out the cost they decided to just build their own filters. Twitter is also exploring the ability to upload and edit videos without using a third-party application like YouTube. This article has a lot to do with economics and the battle between two companies trying to get people to use their site and apps and not the other. In this case Twitter is really trying to become the most popular and important social networking site where people will be able to do anything on and it will be instant. They are changing what they once were to try to morph into Facebook because of the increasing popularity of Instagram and the fact that Facebook bought it.  I think personally that Twitter is making a good decision about the filter but i don't think twitter should add their own video player because it would change twitter and its purpose of being instant statements and pictures. YouTube is good at what they do and twitter should stay out of it. However with the whole idea of adding filters to Twitter you get the benefits of Instagram with the benefits of Twitter which might just keep them on top of Instagram.

Following Facebook's purchase of Instagram for almost $1 Billion in April 2012, it seems appropriate that Twitter would integrate something similar into their users' experience. 'Inside sources' say that Twitter is working on a photo-filter system that will be integrated directly in the site and mobile apps that hopes to bypass third-party services (such as Instagram.) While Instagram is a social network that focuses on social images with limited text, Twitter is renowned for its 140 character text-based updates with occasional images. An advantage of Twitter's supposed photo filtering system would be that there would most likely be a website equivalent to the mobile app, a problem that has plagued Instagram users who want a PC experience. As of now, there have been no official confirmations by Twitter, but the idea of a Twitter-exclusive photo sharing system seems interesting; although the market is currently saturated by Instagram, which can export images to other social networks, including Twitter. Legally, Facebook and Instagram may be able to take action against Twitter, depending on how similar their filtering system will be. This relates to eLifestyle and ICS20 because as social network users, we are always searching for ways to monetize our networks to one cohesive experience; another photo-sharing application seems arbitrary when there is already a capable system (Instagram.)

A 16 year old teenage girl attracts the attention of her followers after her tweet claiming that there was someone in her house. The girl was supposedly kidnapped by the stranger in the house when she disappeared; however, after the investigation, the police confirmed that she left voluntarily. Within two days of searching for the lost teen, the police found her walking at the side of a highway. The police finalized that the teen faked her kidnapping.  After the teenage girl tweeted that there was someone in her house, more than 30,000 people retweeted and the local police department received over 6,000 calls about her frightening situation. This event shows how fast news travels through social networking sites and how messy the issue could become if what you post is untrue. The teen that was once known as the young lady who was kidnapped by an intruder, is now someone who has made poor choices and worried many people for reasons unknown.  

*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.

As many of us may or may not know, Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung for apparently copying Apple's iPad when Samsung released the Galaxy Tab. However, the UK court ordered Apple to repay Samsung after proving that the information Apple provided in the lawsuit was false and misleading leading to proof that Samsung didn't copy Apple. Apple made two apologies to Samsung and will now have to repay Samsung all the money they sued them for.  This has to do with the legal tag because the lawsuit from Apple and Apple's compensation to Samsung are both legal actions. These actions also have to do with following the law since Apple wrongfully accused Samsung of copying which is against the law. I think that the UK court's decision is just because a company cannot sue another company just because they are remotely similar. If they could then we would have very little options when it comes to technology. For example,the first company to release a first person shooter game would be the only FPS game since the company could sue other game companies for copying their game genre. I just think Apple's lawsuit against Samsung was really just unreasonable in general.

This article is about Freescale launching the world's smallest arm chip. It is made of silicon and is only 2 x 2 x 0.5mm. It can hold 48 HMz ARMM Cortex-M0+ processor, 32KB flash memory, and 4KB of RAM. This, however, is not designed to run desktop software, but is instead intended to be used for products that can be swallowed. I think this is an improvement on "Portable Computing", as this technology can be used in the medical field. This also follows the trend of minimization, as we can now see the potential and advantages of having smaller chips, for example, inserting them into pills that can be swallowed. Freescale is pricing this product at 75 cents apiece, if purchased in 100 000 unit loads. However, I am certain that the cost will go up dramatically if launched successfully, causing the a shift in the electronic market and economy.

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. 

This article is about a man in Tokyo who sent many mass killing threats to a comic book event and many schools. Each threat would be followed by a riddle. The man hacked computers and sent messages to newspapers and broadcasters saying that details of a computer virus used to send the threats were strapped to a cat living on an island near Tokyo. Police found the cat and with it found a message that said that no more messages will be sent. Police analyzed the memory card and footage taken by security cameras and suspect that Katayama -a resident of Tokyo- was responsible for the hacking campaign. This article is a prime example of the dangers of computing and shows that the security of our computers is still not perfect and can be breached. I see this man's act as a childish call for attention and believe that this man should grow up and "get a life" as some would say. I don't understand how a grown man could have the heart to threaten the lives of many innocent children; I hope that there is retribution for such an offense.

Earlier today, Twitter announced  a brand new update for it's searching features for the web and smartphones including Android and IOS. This new update adds a search button to the Iphone making it up to speed with Androids and any form of a tablet. Also, this update improves search results for photos, tweets and twitter accounts. Secondly, the connect tab automatically defaults to interactions which will display new followers, mentions as well as re tweets. Lastly, which is probably the most favourite new addition, is a change in Twitters mobile implementations handle links. Meaning, you can now click a URL directly from your twitter timeline without having to open a related tweet. This is the new twitter search update that was released earlier today. Make sure to install this update and the mobile site is already sporting the latest updates, but you will need to update your IOS or Android smartphone at their respective store.

This article is about a new Playstation controller, which is thought to be made for the next-gen console the PS4.  Sony is expected to release information about this new gaming console on February 20th, in New York.  The Playstation 4 is going to be the next console in the line of Playstations, following the PS3 which is currently outdated by many computers.  The PS4 will need to compete with the rumored XBox 720, as they are expected to be released around the same time this year, before Christmas.  Sony's ability to innovate and add touch screen technology to their controller will help make the playstation 4 ahead of the other gaming consoles, such as the XBox and computers.  This will also help Sony generate sales, as it will include new technology to older controller designs, and make it more appealing tp consumers.

States in the US have been slowly gaining traction that allows gambling to be completely legal online. This would mean that anyone over 18 can sign onto an account which allows them to gamble away all the money they have. Nevada was the first state to legalize online gambling, and more states are estimated to follow suit. Although the article doesn't give an opinion on the newly legalized gambling, I believe that this news is terrible. More and more people will become addicted to gambling, and now it's very easy and very comfortable to lose your life earnings. These new rulings will eventually run into some legal issues, as people under 18 WILL find a way to gain access to these operations. There is no proper way that rules can be enforced in online gambling. People will become addicted, kids will gain access, and people will go bankrupt. Gambling is alright, in moderation, but these new laws will allow anyone with an internet connection to gamble away everything they own without even realizing it. Good thing we live in Canada.

Tetris is a popular game in today's society.  Almost everyone plays Tetris.  Why are people so hooked on this game though?  BBC published a report that states that it's the game's ability to continually provide a frustrating piece for the players to deal with, followed by the gratification of putting a piece in the right spot that is so appealing and makes the player wants to continue playing.  As well, once the game is started, the player is compelled to complete it.   The reason why I chose the tag of Portable Computing is because many companies are creating apps which allows people to play Tetris via their mobile devices.  The reason why they create this is because so many people enjoy playing Tetris, so the companies create apps for people to play Tetris on the go. 

On the internet, it,s our responsibility to keep our personal lives private. This article is about how 3 celebrities got hacked, and how we can learn from it. The celebrities include Paris Hilton, who's phone got hacked and her personal information was posted. Scarlett Johansson had nude pictures of her, and lastly, Brett Favre who also had nude pictures of himself. We need to be aware of the fact that our personal information may be falling into the wrong hands. Celebrities have different lives than us, particularly those who have paparazzi who follow them around all day which means the information a celebrity chooses to keep on a digital device is in jeopardy. Imagine if someone was constantly trying to hack into your e-mail or social accounts to post embarrassing things about you? This is why we have to be careful about what we post online.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed to help protect digital rights, but allowed the Librarian of Congress to make exceptions to the act that would otherwise not follow the act. Today (October 28), four new exemptions to the DMCA were put into effect most notably the legalizing of jailbreaking on iPhones but not iPads. The other exemptions to the DMCA are the requirement of disabled people to own multiple devices in order to access e-books, the illegalizing of unlocking a cell phone purchased after January 2013 at a new carrier without permission from your old carrier, and the legalizing of ripping some content of a DVD only for specific purposes. The new exemptions put into effect could have a serious impact on the technology market. The number of e-book reader sold to disabled customers will decrease drastically since they will have to buy other devices so they can legally read e-books. Apple and app developers would also lose a lot of revenue from the App Store since more users will be motivated to jailbreak their iPhones and get pirated apps instead of actually buying apps since they can do so legally. The new exemptions could cause some providers to lose some money though not a significant amount should the provider refuse to unlock cell phones when consumers go to other countries since in the foreign country, consumers will be paying and using service from a local provider instead of their original provider causing them to miss out on some money. Finally, the DMCA exemptions could cause a decrease in DVD sales not just because they are losing popularity already but also because if someone wants to rip a part of a DVD, they can just borrow it from someone else instead of buying and ripping the needed content. I think these new exemptions are very silly and could end up being more harmful than useful. Making disabled customers buy multiple devices just to access e-books is very discouraging to potential e-book reader customers. I also wonder th

Instagram has been sold to Facebook for a billion dollars. Instagram has been out-doing both Facebook and Google. There had been much money tossed around to buy Instagram, fortunately for Facebook, they bought them out. Instagram is an App that adds effects to any picture you have taken. It allows you to change the way the picture looks with a quick edit and doesn't take long at all. Also, you are able to upload this picture to the server and various amounts of people can view it, if you wish. In addition, you may also follow people too to see what they post. This is relevant to the things learned so far because the creators of this app have are now millionaires due to their extensive knowledge of building App programs and knowing how they work. The app is quick and easy, it is a free download and because of the many free downloads around the world, the developers are now rewarded.