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thoughts/opinions?

This is an amazing article showing just how far space travel has come. Astronaut's have taken many pictures from space of the moon, they then put them all together to give us this amazing view of the moons north pole!  

The Wii is so five years ago. But, could this bring it back? There is a possibility, which is exactly what the people at Nintendo jumped on. The new and improved Gamecube-free Wii is coming to North America. Not only that, but it comes with a copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack (wow I've always wanted this) and is designed to lie on its side. The new Wii refresh has been advertised in Europe for around $150, so no big price drop. However, there is a twist to this story, folks. The old and Gamecube-compatible Wii will remain available, at the SAME  $150 price tag. So, really. What's the point? Making it the same price is only going to confuse people, and sales might not be as high as they want. 

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!!

With each new generation of smartphones, dropped calls and battery life issues are still an issue, the reason is partly because antenna technology has not changed very much. Scottish scientists have changed this. They spent 7 years to create a cellphone antenna quite smaller than a coin. The Sofant Technologies team claims that this new antenna is more efficient, finding signals faster and using up less battery life. The smaller something is in technology the less it has to travel therefore speeding the device up. The antenna also takes advantage of the full potential of LTE and 4G connectivity. Sofant plans on licensing its designs to smartphone manufacturers all over the world.  I chose the tag of portable computing because this article is about antennas, a vital part of a cellphone. This new antenna will affect people who use cellphones, which is a large amount of people in North America. In my opinion I think this new antenna is long overdue. The fact that antenna technology hasn't changed much over the years is pretty surprising. This new antenna is a step in the right direction for smartphones. 

This article talks about some businesses that now only hire non-smokers. This article states that this is the new trend among North American employees. This new hiring practice has slashed in half the cost of employee health benefits compared to five or six years ago which means that businesses will save a lot of money. Smokers cost more money, miss more workdays and have more health problems which is why businesses don't like to hire them. Some people think that they shouldn't be excluded as long as they do their job and isn't going to help them end their addiction. This article relates to the tag economics because it doesn't allow non-smokers to work therefore limiting the amount of people that would apply for a job. This is a downside because if not many people apply for a job and if some of those applicants were smokers, less people would be able to take up that occupation.

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.

It's no secret that the countries such as North Korea (obviously), China, and Iran have filtered the internet via censorship to within a couple of breathes of its life. But now there is a new country passing censorship policies: Russia. According to the New York Times, the Russian government has

this is my first bookmark

this is my first bookmark

my first bookmark

this is my first book mark.. 

This is my first bookmark. 

rainbow socks, hell ya

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.

Video gaming is pretty big in our society.  It may seem like it's just fun and games to most people, but to others it could be serious.  Is it possible that video gaming could be bigger than sports?  Possibly.  The amount of spectators spectating individual gaming events are immense.  Not only do people spectate it live, but they could also spectate from the comfort of their own computer.  The Major League Gaming Spring Championship in June attracted 4.7 million online viewers.    This affects our everyday life because instead of training for a physically active competition, people could "train" and hone their skills to play video games.  People from all around the world could connect with each other and compete with each other through video games.    Whether I agree or disagree with regards to making video gaming a real sport or not is still in between the borderline.  You can practice your skills while playing a sport, but you can also hone your skills by playing video games.  Nonetheless, if video gaming does become an official sport, then we could say goodbye to society as we know it today.

This article informs the world of a computer program created by researchers from North Carolina State University, that allows a computer to have the tools to help, guide, and take control of a unpleasant driving experience. A computer with this program installed can understand what a camera is looking at and makes decisions based on what it sees. The program is highly intelligent because it can sort visual data and make decisions related to finding the lanes on a road, detecting how those lanes change as a car is moving, and controlling the car to stay in the correct lane. I find this program extremely fascinating and more importantly is also useful for lazy or bad drivers because if it just so happens you fall asleep at the wheel, this program acts as a lifesaver to prevent you and others from severe harm while you can trust you will be safe and secure with your computer taking over. This computer is essentially driving your car and is designed to notice a pedestrian or a stop sign and is assigned the appropriate action to complete. This could be the start in advances in technology where more computer programs can allow assistance and advisement when someone is struggling or in need of help. Something like this can definitively be cool and if it works effectively at all times, I believe this will be a huge invention that we all look back on one day. 

This new Ford has the latest version of its infontainment system "SYNC with MyFord Touch." SYNC is voice-activated technology which connects your smartphone and MP3 player to your car's dashboard and steering wheel. It launched in 2007 and now there are 4 million Ford cars in North America with SYNC. The latest evolution is called MyFord Touch, a fully integrated "cabin tech" system. Ford has not only been a leader in car infotainment systems, it has also adopted the software paradigm of iterative upgrades. At the end of last year it announced free upgrades for MyFord. This relates to the course because it shows how technology is getting better and better.

Its funny on how on the internet most people think that kim jung il was a big dictator while in north korea he was a amazing leader, meanwhile at espn they considered him as the worlds greatest golfer. Sigh, the internet

This article is about Google Fiber which is a new type of internet that uses an optic fiber cable to deliver Internet at the incredible speeds of a gigabit. The Internet that is available now in Canada is only up to about 500 megabit speed, and Google Fiber is about double the speed, at a lower cost, in comparison to Rogers or Bell. The article explains how the Fiber Internet is spreading to cities of the United States, such as Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah. There is a lot to be done on installing this Internet in the cities, and it will take a lot of time, but in the end it will be worth it, as it increases the poor quality Internet Services that are available now in North America. In my opinion, Google Fiber should start making its way into the new developing cities of Canada, such as Vaughan, or Richmond Hill because it will be easier to install since the infrastructure is not finalized.

Mozilla will begin selling smartphones running the Firefox operating system that will be priced at $25. $25 for a smartphone is an extremely low price, but it will not perform as well as our smartphones today. While it can be purchased in North America, it will also be sold in less developed countries like; Panama, Nicaragua, Argentina, and more. I think this is a great way for Mozilla to earn money because they are not directly competing with Microsoft, Apple, and Google. In such countries, just having a smartphone is a big deal; even if it cannot perform as many things that the modern smartphone can. This will allow people who would have never had the chance of owning a smartphone to actually own one. I think Mozilla has really thought outside the box here and while some may criticize while thinking it is a cheap and terrible phone, it may be something amazing to someone in another country.

Just when you thought that the authoritative figures of North America could not have been more messed up, the American government turns up and pulls something like this: Palcohol, take your Pal wherever you go! This is a powdered form of alcohol (in packets that you rip and mix the contents in water to receive hard liquor - or maybe even cocktails from pre-mixed powders) that the government has apparently legalized the production of, ignorantly raising the potential of underage drinking when they should be doing everything in their power to discourage it. This Palcohol concerns me greatly as it also makes the hiding and later consumption of alcohol to be a hell of a lot easier now, providing a gargantuan amount of opportunities for teen stupidity. Why, America, why must you do this to yourself? And you can't even blame another country for your problems of increased drinking and driving rates in youth, because this is solely your own fault.

Looks like business mans might use watches instead of phones. We're making technology a whole lot smaller and much more efficient. If this technology becomes a success Nokia might step up its name and might be able to compete with other big time companies (well slowly). Right now Nokia brands dominates most of Asia and plans to expand along North America.

Or use phones for watches

Microsoft is now expanding to the Middle East and North Africa with their Windows Phone and teaming up with Brightpoint. I think that this is great for their business and allows them to spread their clientele, although they are a little behind compared to companies like Blackberry, who already have their products in these countries.