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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

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. 

On October 2nd a new gaming experience was released. NBA 2k13 hit the shelves after its long awaited anticipation, but what separates this NBA game from all the others? simply everything has been improved. For example the soundtrack on NBA is produced by one of the greatest and richest rappers ever Jay-Z. Gaming wise it has improved the controls a lot by making it more realistic. They have also added lots of retro characters that were not there from before. It has included lots of historic teams and most importantly they have even improved the graphics form before. Overall this game has achieved high rating from Gamespot, Metacritic and many more. This game has lived up to all the hype and big expectations and i recommend that everybody gets this game because it is so BLESSED.

This website article is for those who do not know what the movie Dredd is about, especially parents.  So here's the summary.  Dredd originated from the hand of John Wagner and his artist Carlos Ezquerra.  It's set in the future where nuclear fallout limits the population to live in Mega Cities.  The police in these cities are called Judges so that they are Judge, Jury and Executioner to save the hassle.  Parents would like this movie.  This movie is rated R/18 because of swearing, murder, drug use, sexual situations and blood.  The cast is amazing because they stay true to their roles.  The effects give you a very immerse experience.  The 3-D isn't really necessary but it absolutely mesmerizes you at certain points in the film.  This website article will answer most of your questions about the movie Dredd and if you still have questions then google it.

Glad you have your first post out of the way. Now, have you seen the movie? I'm interested in your opinion. Furthermore, what are we tagging this under? What's the connection to what we study as a class?

This post is about Online Universities and why they don't compare to the real thing. Products like Saba LMS, Moodle, and iTunes U have made e-learning mainstream, and most universities offer and allow some or most of their coursework to be completed online. First off, the concern with many online universities and colleges is post-graduation employment statistics. Most have very low graduation rates. A government recruited states that "it's not ideal. It doesn't set a baseline expectation, for me or for the people he or she will meet in the field. If I just need to check off a 'degree' box on a requirements form, online will do, but if two candidates are similar, I'm going with the one from Stanford or UVA." Moreover, the differences come down to two things: brand and social interaction. Traditional schools can clearly understand reputations, strengths and weaknesses. Without historical data and a history of success or failure, the online schools' GPAs, class standing and other performance metrics are just numbers and statistics. The author of this article also states that "Giant online schools that accept pretty much everyone may be democratizing education, but they're not helping employers or anyone else separate out the best and the brightest." This can hurt the prestige, and ultimately the graduates of the school. This issue relates to the "eLifestyle" tag because in the end it will definitely affect not only the students, but the regular citizens of a country. The graduates of universities, online of traditional,  will be the leaders of the future, and I believe that traditional universities and colleges are better because professors can get to know and understand students at a different level. It is hard to judge or mark a student based only on online text. For instance, you will never be able to distinguish a student that truly tries and works hard but cannot understand the information properly to a student that understands it but is lazy and slacks off.

What if there a was a way to charge your smartphone and get a workout at the same time?  This project is currently being implemented in New York City. Bikes open to the public that are able to charge phones have been scattered all over New York City.  The Charge Cycle hopes to bring a network of outdoor neon-green stationary bikes that allows anyone to charge their phone for free by simply peddling.  It takes the same amount of time to charge as if you were to directly plug it into the wall. Although there are some concerns of theft, developers have chained the bikes and also put locks on the bikes, which makes it harder to move. Nowadays, we all rely on our smartphones, they are technically our everything.  Many people would be devastated if it were to die, and they will not be able to use it until they have their charger and an outlet.  The Charge Cycle offers a charging system for smartphone users while they get a workout as well, so it is a "win win" situation for these users.  This affects our lifestyle because instead of sitting around doing nothing while waiting for our phones to charge, we can get a workout out of it, and stay fit and healthy. I do think this a good idea because obesity rates today are increasing, which is dangerous.  In order to maintain a healthy diet, exercise is important.  This bike allows us to maintain said healthy diet, while charging our phones at the same time, which truly is a win win.

Samsung has recently announced that it has sold 30 million Galaxy S III smartphones worldwide, the phone dropped in may making it the fastest selling smartphone to date. Although this sales figure seems impressive it still falls short of the sales rate for the iPhone 5. Apple doesn't announce sales for individual iPhone models but analysts expect the company to sell between 40 to 50 million iPhone 5 devices in the month of December. Overall, Samsung is said to have shipped twice as many smartphones than Apple.

In Thailand, e-book has been spreading according to local books and magazines "Ookbee". It is Thailand's biggest e-bookstore with a claimed 88% market share. It has 3 million users so far and is adding new subscribers at a rate of 6,000 each day. Last year, delivered about 8 million books free and paid and ranked in revenues of about "several million dollars" in the year.

Google, being the innovators and marketers that they are, are working on a new feature which will put Chrome ahead of the pack in the mobile browsing world. Google is using a new data compressing tool to make browsing faster and more reliable. The new technique involves forcing websites to be loaded to Google's proxies. Rather then having the user connect to the individual websites protocols, the user connects to Google's lighting fast server, allowing them to few the web page at a much faster rate. In addition, Google's servers will be made to compress the data of the website, allowing an even faster connection. The Opera browser has a similar feature to this called "Turbo" and it works in a similar way. However, Google may have the upper hand here, as Opera can't compete with Google's size, market, and staying power.

This article is about a new recyclable solar cell. This new cell is made using plant-derived substrates. This is known as cellulose nanocrystal substrates (or CNC). These solar cells benefit from being truly disposable and by eliminating the waste that results from the use of alternative materials like petroleum or glass. These cells are not only transparent enough to allow light to pass into an embedded semiconductor. These cells dissolve in water which makes them recyclable. The only downside to this new cell is that it will not be available in the near future and the cells can only yield a 2.7-percent conversion efficiency rate while the normal cells can reach 10 percent. At least we now know that a clean fuel ear is well within reach. I think that this new cell is very cool because we have never seen anything like it before and will help us reduce a lot of waste when it is ready.

Game of Thrones, the fantasy series that came out of a series of novels written by George R. R. Martin and adapted by HBO has just recently aired its third season with a bunch of people watching it during its premiere. The bad news is that the amount of people pirating the show is more then half the amount of people who actually watched it on HBO. With the premiere having around 6.7 million viewers and the amount of pirate viewers at 4.4 million. These stats are quite impressive but HBO can expect a lot more views when it counts on-demand, DVR, online streams with a gross audience of 11.6 million viewers when counting non-live viewers. On the other hand, TorrentFreak claims that GoT has been the most-pirated show over the past year and that the pirated audience is growing even faster. A few hours after the first torrent of the show was uploaded, it had around 110,303 leechers and 52,786 seeders, a total of 163,088 people. This number actually broke the previous record with 144,663 peers for another show called "Heroes".

This article is very interesting in many ways. Many people admire the movie Spider-Man and people would love to have something like this so called spider-sense robot suit. The suit is really cool because it uses many microphones to hear in coming objects, the suit then detects where this noise is coming from and pushes you away from the object. This is great for people that are blind or slow because the suit will move you from harms way and save lives. The suit was tested a number of times and it has a 95% success rate which is really good for the first of it's kind. I am really excited for this cause it brings us one step close to super human like characteristics.

From the time social networking rose sharply in popularity, everyone has been sharing their lives to the Internet through pictures and statuses. Since then, users' news feed has been filled with things they really don't care about. Whether it be someone telling the world what kind of cereal they are eating or posting a celebrity's quote even though they have no idea what the quote means. Facebook's co-founder Mark Zuckerberg says that the amount of pointless garbage we see now will increase 1000 times more in the next 10 years. Yes that's right, more pictures of people making duck faces and statuses giving every detail of someone's life. This ties in with eLifestyle because even if we don't want to admit it, logging on to social networking sites to see what pointless information people are posting is a part of most of our daily lives. This daily ritual is good for giving us something to do to pass the time. However, our constant obsession is sometime placed before our education by people spending too much time checking on what their friends are doing therefore depriving them of the time to finish homework. I think Mark Zuckerberg's claim that the rate of sharing will increase dramatically is highly unlikely because once the amount of sharing reaches a certain point, social networking users might be fed up and quit using it because any posts that actually seem intelligent will be drowned out by other more dull posts. I personally don't like meaningless statuses like how someone just bought an apple at No Frills, which is part of the reason why I lost interest in social networking sites.

This article talks about new program in Facebook called time line. Timeline is becoming famous among many people. However, some people are against this changes. this caused some marketers to wonder if migrating their brand to Facebook Timeline was worth the effort. there is a report that brands are getting an average of 46% more engagement with Timeline. Average Engagement per post and Fan Engagement Rate increased about 60% in total.   Most of the brands and their engagement post changed a lot after the timeline therefore it was worth for them to market their brands. This relates to our course because it talks about how our culture, store and even their marketing strategies are affected by the internet. 

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 tells the readers about a new game app on the iPhone called "Life of George." This game involves building with lego blocks. The point of the game is to build the structure with lego pieces that shows up on the screen under a certain amount of time. It may seem easy but it is apparently difficult and designed for people ages 14 and up. You would also need this mat that acts as a green screen for the game. Once you are done building the structure you would lay it flat on the mat and take a clear photo of it. Then the game will rate how fast you completed, and how accurate it was built.

in this article, it is stating that MARVEL opened its vault to offer 15 to comic books to iOS and Android users. Marvel is offering this one-time fee of $0.99, a reduced rate, to access the comics during March as a promotion for he company's activities. Marvel Unlimited users can now download up to 12 comics at a time to their personal libary and enable offline reading for on-the-go access. following the month-long promo, fans can continue their subscription to Marvel unlimited for $9.99 a month or $69 for a basic year plan or $99 for the year long premium, Marvel Unlimited Plus, which gives members additional discounts on Marvel products and a first look at Marvel news. Marvel Unlimited is available in the APP Store and Goggle Play Store.   

Daylight saving time might say that it helps make our lives nicer and help us save energy, but in reality it is completely pointless. Daylight Saving Time was actually first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 but the idea was shot down by everyone stating that it was pointless. The Germans then used it the First World War to save coal during war time. After that everyone started using it and didn't think to change back. Today, people state that this change of time helps to save energy, promotes a healthy lifestyle, and reduces traffic accidents. First off, Daylight saving time does not in fact save energy. Recent studies show that it might reduce the US electricity usage during March and April, but only by 1%. Secondly, this does not help us to become any healthier. In fact, the clock shifts disrupt our circadian rhythms and actually spike the suicide rates and increases the number of recorded heart attacks. Daylight saving time also does not reduce traffic. Some studies show that the time change makes no difference at all while others suggest that traffic is reduced by 0.7 which is pathetic and makes no difference. I personally do not like Daylight saving time only because I loose an hour of sleep and it screws up my whole schedule because everything is off by one hour. I much prefer the clocks changing an hour behind so I get an extra hour of sleep.

This article talks about the upcoming iWatch by Apple. The concept is by Todd Hamilton and is based on the Nike FuelBand. The iWatch itself will be manufactured with Richtek Technology, TPK supplying chips and sapphire touch panels and the processor that the device is said to run in developed by Apple. The exact features of the iWatch are currently unknown but there are rumors that the device will include biometric sensors to check health-related statistics, sleep activity, UV light exposure, and heart rate. Reports say that the new iWatch will be released later in the year with the iPhone 6 and iOS 8. This article shows how Apple is moving forward to creating more products other than just phones and computers. Maybe soon they might start creating kitchen appliances *joke*

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.