Group items tagged

This post is about a new app made by McAfee which is meant to be an extra security for people's photos on Facebook. We know that even if we put our privacy settings on "only friends" there are ways through comments, likes and mutual friends that people you do not know can come across your pictures and download, print or upload them on a different site. This app helps protect by asking users to list who will get to view their photos. Only those people on the list will get to see the photo no matter who is friends with who, or who likes or comments on it. People not on the exact list will only see the photo blurry and barely visible. In addition to that nobody will be able to grab, print or download the photos even if they are on the list of people who can see the photos. This app is only in its development or "beta" phase, but it is already free to download and use on Internet Explorer and Firefox. The company is still working on versions for Chrome and mobile devices. Before concluding they did mention that there are still ways to photograph the photo with your phone, if you have a clear picture. I believe this app is a big step to having online security. This app can help stop the spread of your photos before it starts. People may not think about their internet security very often but it is important to know that once it's on the internet it's on there forever. With internet popularity growing and growing we must also know the dangers of posting photos and protect ourselves. Facebook allows so much public information to be revealed this app can ensure you have a more private account. In my opinion this is a great app and considering that it is free while it is being developed I think people should try it out. Although it's only available on Firefox and Internet Explorer it is already a leap in the right direction. However, as it was mentioned earlier you can still have people take photos from their phones. Nevertheless, if you chose the correct people on your list

This post is about the price Americans paid over the past 5 years to fix their broken iPhones. With such a thin, glass design, the iphone has not been a very durable phone so far. Many Americans found this out the hard way by dropping it from their hand, plunging it into a body of water such as a toilet or a tub, or dropping it from their laps. The cost of all these accidents adds up to a whopping 5.9 billion dollars over the past five years in the United States. This issue relates back to the "Portable Computing" tag, because no matter how advanced the iPhone is or how it can improve you daily life in hundreds of different ways, it is not able to accomplish anything if it is broken. Reliability when it comes to withstanding drops is a major factor required in order to positively affect our lives. In my opinion, this is disappointing coming from such a prestigious company such as Apple. I think that for iPhone 5, they should build a more robust phone, without sacrificing its slim, thin design that everybody loves so much. You should not have to buy an expensive case in order to keep your phone protected, especially with a price like the iPhone's.

Apple has done it again. They've just announced a new pair of apple earbuds, once again, trying to brainwash apple fanboys in buying their extremely overly priced product. "EarPods", they call it. They say the EarPods have been in development for three years now, making this the "perfect" apple accessory. Although the EarPods, compared to the old apple earbuds, have majorly improved in comfort and sound quality, it's just not something I personally would be crazy for. For 30 bucks, I can honestly and hands-down say that this is a total rip-off. When buying apple products, keep in mind that you are paying around 30% for the product and 70% for the name, Apple. Im not saying that Apple products are bad, I just think it's unfair to have to pay such a high price for products you can get for a lower price and better too.

This article mentions a new invention by West Health Institute in San Diego.  This new invention is called the Reflexion Rehabilitation Measurement Tool (RMT). It uses your Windows 7 computer and Microsoft Kinect to help patients suffering from musculoskeletal disease to get their daily physical therapy and help patients stay on track. It also helps keep the patients involved with interactive feedback so that their doctors can see their progress and help the patients constantly improve in a fun way. This new technology will also help bring down the cost of healthcare as well as the number of doctor visits a patient has to make without compromising quality.  This article is all about eLifestyle and how technology can help improve our daily lives and in this case health. With this technology we can improve health care and bring down the cost that comes with the therapy. This tool can help patients stay connected with their doctors and constantly work and learn new physical therapy routines for the patients needs without long doctor visits. I think this is a brilliant idea that will help save time and money opening up room to help treat more people with musculoskeletal disease.

In this article it describes how many wonderful things the internet has brought to us and how they are safe. Over the internet you can do important things like transfer large sums of money or keep important medical documents but there is controversy about voting. If someone could hack something as important as a presidential election it would cause huge economic effects and possibly war. A good thing would be that more people would probably vote if it was so easy to do.

With Christmas slowly approaching, many of us will be shopping for presents online. For scammers, this means there will be more unsuspecting victims to scam. McAfee knows the risk of being scammed is present and has set up a list of 12 scams seen during the holiday season. These include fake charities, malicious mobile apps, too-good-to-be-true offers, and fake gift cards. As online shopping gets more popular, the threat from scammers increases as well so we have to know how to protect ourselves and keep our information secure. While shopping online is more convenient and cheaper in some cases, it isn't as secure as shopping in person at a store. Despite the lesser security in shopping online, people still would prefer it because of its convenience. I think it is good that McAfee released this list of scams to look out for because it will make sure more consumers during the Christmas season and everyday will have knowledge of what to look out for when shopping online. Though I doubt many people will see the list, McAfee has possibly saved many people from having to deal with being scammed, besides even if you can't help everyone you should help anyway.

This article talks about exploration in the Antarctic's ancient glaciers.  NASA is exploring these areas of the world because they are isolated, have not been disturbed, and are similar to conditions on other planets, such as Mars.  NASA's exploration into this glacier discovered some "very hardy bacteria" that was able to survive in this harsh environment.  NASA's robotic submersible could have disrupted this otherwise untouched ecosystem.  This perfect ecosystem also could house bacteria that could be harmful to humans, and was only surviving here, isolated from everything.  NASA's robotic submersible is still disturbing untouched ecosystems, and this could have serious consequences to the species that are surviving there. To keep these ecosystems form being destroyed NASA could use smaller robots to view these ecosystems, similar to the technology that enables doctors to put tiny cameras inside of people.  This could limit the effects of human interference in these unique ecosystems, and it would be better than sending a baseball bat sized camera.

Previously, Twitter, Apple, and Facebook have been on the list of tech companies hacked within the last couple of weeks. As of March 2nd, 2013, Evernote also joins this list when their network is breached by an attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service. Evernote has notified users via  e-mail, blogs, and social media to change passwords so that users personal information can remain safe on the Evernote network. The hackers had successfully accessed usernames, e-mail adresses and encrypted passwords, however, they were stopped before any damage could be done. This relates to the "Privacy & Security" category because users data and personal information is being accessed without authorization. Obviously, this can cause many problems for users especially because their work and information can be stolen or deleted. Evernote encourages creating a strong password to ensure that an account remains secure, however, this is a questionable matter because the website should also consider upgrading their system in order to keep users safe. As part of the eLifestyle, many users rely on cloud storage to store information, especially on Evernote. The recent hacking just proves how reliable cloud storage really is. When saving data, it is important to consider the possibility of it being stolen or deleted. With this in mind, one shouldn't depend on cloud storage for saving all of their work or important material as it hasn't proven to be very reliable. And if you are using cloud storage, it would be smart to backup important files on a USB or Computer.

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!    

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 is about how Nokia is losing sales because of lack of demand.In an effort ot save the company, Nokia collaborated with Microsoft to create Nokia's Lumia Windows smartphone, the market for it's phones is still declining. There has been a 20 percent decline in quarterly sales resulting in a loss of 272 million euros. Although sales of the LUmia Windows smartphone has increased by 27% it is not enough to offset Nokia's losses. This article shows that Apple has created a niche market in which it dominates. Apple seems to be the only company that customers continually purchase phones from, without decline. With each new phone release Apple develops stronger customer loyalty, that keeps it as one of the top phone companies in the market.

This article is about how Google has a new web engine for Chromium and Chrome. What they basically did was they "forked" with WebKit and Blink. WebKit is described as the glue that binds the modern web: the rendering engine powers Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, and many mobile browsers both past and present. Google believes that Chromium's multi-process approach has added too much complexity for both the browser and Webkit itself, so it's creating a separate, simpler fork named Blink. Although the new engine will be very similar to WebKit at the start, it's expected to differ over time as Google strips out unnecessary code and tweaks the underlying platform. The company has also confirmed top us that both Chrome and Chrome OS will be using Blink in the future.

Many people these days do not consider refrigerators as interesting pieces of technology. when you walk into your local Best Buy, you go look at the phones or the TVs, not the fridges. Ever since CES 2010 though, fridge technology has come a long way. New "smart fridges" have come out ever since that perform many tasks such as tweeting and running applications such as evernote. Samsung is now releasing a new fridge that carbonates your drinks for you. They call this technology SodaStream. This article relates to the portable computing tag because fridge technology has come so far that there are fridges now that run full versions of Android OS. This article also relates to the elifestyle tag because fridges have come from being appliances that barely keep your food cold, to pieces of technology that can do so much more. overall, I am impressed with fridge technology and will probably buy a new smart fridge in the next 2 years

This article talks about the current state of transparency in smartphones and where we are headed. So far, transparent smartphones have only existed in concepts and prototypes that have never gone into full production. This is largely due to the difficulties in creating fully transparent smartphones while keeping the same quality that smartphones like the iPhone. Another problem that this new type of smartphone is facing is that is currently has no software so it's difficult to actually visualize what the end product will be. There is also the fact that the consumer market may not even want transparent smartphones and that we're fine with our current ones. The company that created the prototype, Polytron, has more money to work with and their current prototype is already looking better than most previous attempts at creating a translucent electronic. Polytron stated that we may see transparent smartphones by the end of this year. That is possibly a little too optimistic but within a couple of years we may see transparent electronic devices emerge resembling those in movies we have seen today.

This article is about how there was a shortage of the iPhone 5 being sold. Apple sold ''only'' 5 million iPone 5s the first weekend, and many people suspected the reason the number wasn't higher was a supply shortfall. The reason why they didn't have enough iPhone 5s ready was it's display, which uses new technology to make it thinner than ever. The in-cell touch panel tech is harder to produce, leaving people to believe Apple's display suppliers couldn't keep up with demand. When deliveries on pre-orders began to get pushed back several weeks, analysts suggested Apple's new in-cell technology was too difficult to produce in high quantities. 

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.

This article is about apple and the major publishers. Apple wants to raise the price of the e books app. amazon sold e books for 10$ or less, but with the iPad they let the publishers  set their own prices. which forced amazon to raise their prices in order to keep there books app running.

This lifehacker article explains how to save money in terms of finding and purchasing the best deals on mobile apps. If you are someone who is either tired or annoyed by paying full price on an app that never really lived up to your expectations or your someone who just wants to find a good deal, then your in luck, because the best sales or price drops to find for apps is not that hard, it just requires a little patience. If you are a iPhone or Android user, the best way to track price drops easily and efficiently is to create a list so you can easily check on the price of an app to see if it's gone on sale or not. A particular nifty tool on the iPhone is when you add a interested app to your account of a created wish list, the App Shopper app will either send you an email or a push notification when an app you're keeping your eyes on drops in price. Another method in saving money while wanting to purchase apps for your mobile device is to hold out for common sale times. Both the iTunes App Store and Google Play love having sales around the holidays. Also, apps tend to go on sale after they hit the top of the charts to celebrate their success or after an anniversary of some kind. A third strategy is to look at the sale history or possibly a one-year anniversary to see if a possible sale is sure to come around soon enough. Overall, holding out for a good sale and knowing when those sales happen is a good way to keep your app purchasing budget in check. It's important to not waste your money on pointless apps or on ones that end up dropping in price the next day. Wait the extra day or two and save an extra couple dollars because in the long run, this will pay off both economically as well as feeling satisfied with how you shopped to make your mobile device experience that much better.

Here are some steps into getting some of the best deals on Mobile apps. Most apps are $1.29 to 99 cents and sometimes you think they're too overpriced and you just want a good deal! They're are two things about buying apps, you're always looking for the best deal on apps and hate paying full price, or you buy the app, and then find out the next day that the app goes on sale. Here are some easy ways to find out about cheap apps. 1. Set up price drop alerts and create a list of apps YOU want. This is great so you can track the prices of apps you want. 2. Set up notifs of price drops, for iPhone, there is an app called App Shopper where you can search for any app, and add it to your wish list, and when the price of that app drops in sale, you'd get a e-mail telling you the price dropped. You can do the same thing with Android, and those apps are called AppBrain and AppsFire. 3. Hold out for common sale times. Apps tend to go on sale during holidays like Christmas or Easter. Also, they go on sale after they hit the top of the charts to celebrate their success or after an anniversary of some kind. Many think apps aren't that big of a deal about prices, but when you buy a lot, the bill adds up. These steps great tips on how to get a great deal on apps! SO THIS BOOKMARK BETTER BEAT JASON'S BOOKMARK....but it looks like it didn't :'(

Facebook is a website that is used by many users around the world. It is used to see others profiles and keep in touch with all your friends. Facebook usually has many games you can play with your friends like battleship and farmville. But now Facebook is thinking of having full games on the website. They want games to be easily accessible to buy. They want to start with games like Magicka, Dead Rising2, Saints Row3, etc. I think it is a great idea for Facebook because they can make a lot of money if they put popular games on the web. I personally would not buy them off Facebook because I prefer video games on a ps3 or xbox. It relates to the course because you need to program these games on the web for people to buy. As well, its on a social networking site which makes the games get purchased more often. 

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.