Group items tagged

The smartphone market has been dominated by Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices, but with this dominance many people think they do not have any other options when it comes to smartphones other than Apple and Android. Yes, there have been other companies that have tried to combat the powerful hold of Apple and Android but they have faltered and ultimately could not dethrone these smartphone giants. Now the Finnish company Jolla plans on competing against Apple and Android with its new OS, Sailfish which they claim is an alternative to Apple and Android. Jolla also partnered itself with Chinese phone retailer D.Phone so Jolla would have phones that will run Sailfish. For many of us, we are stuck with the decision of buying either an Android or an iPhone since any other phone trying to appear differently was simply forgotten. But the release of Sailfish phones would completely change the smartphone market by giving consumers another option when considering buying a new phone and releasing some of the control that Apple and Android have. It could also be possible that Sailfish phones will be more revolutionary and better looking than Androids and iPhones but still cost less which would attract many consumers who want an innovative but low-cost phone. I think Sailfish will have a large impact on the smartphone market since it uses many gestures that makes the OS unique. Whereas Apple's iPhone and Google's Android will eventually lose their popularity due to Apple and Android's lack of innovation, the Sailfish phones could possibly have the same effect the first iPhone had on the world and become the new dominant smartphone. 

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.

This article is about a space capsule named the Dragon capsule. The capsule will be going to the ISS (international Space Station). it is going to supply the ISS with food and new improvements.  NASA and SpaceX have been trying to send  it earlier but they have experienced problems with their thrusters and they had to delay it for a couple of weeks. They have finally solved the problems and the capsule will arrive at the ISS at March 3rd at 6:01 am (so precise). This will be available for veiwing a NASA TV and will start at 3:30AM the same day.

Recently, there have been a lot of passcode exploits, especially on the iPhone and Samsun Galaxy. On the iPhone, it can allow the attacker to access their way into the Phone app, letting them place calls, see/edit contacts, and access photos via the "assign new picture" option. On the Samsung Galaxy, the attacker can flash whatever was open before the phone was locked for a second. This is enough time to launch an app, which can be repeatedly downloaded and completely unlock your phone. The article suggests the user of the phone should download the Apple's Find my iPhone app or Prey, which can track the location of your smartphone if it is ever lost or stolen. This, they say is the best protection for your personal information stored on your phone. These passcode exploits can let one worry and doubt how much protection the lock screen actually provides. The truth is they are no more secure than any other password or PIN, which means they can eventually be cracked. However, it is still suggested to always lock your screen, just in case it is robbed by someone who does not know anything about getting around locked screens. Many companies are aware of the issues and is releasing new techniques, like the iOS 6.1.3. Hopefully, with time, these password problems will not be an issue anymore.

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.

This article is about an App that prevents incest in Iceland. Since Iceland is so small, many people find that they are starting relationships with their second cousins. This app uses Íslendingabók, which is an online genealogical database. This database contains records of more than 720,000 Icelanders going back 1,200 years using as many records (church documents, census information, and so on) as possible. When two Icelanders meet each other, they bump phones and will be told if they are related or not. This new app already has 5000 downloads and has made life easier for Icelanders by and revamping the dating scene.

This article is about how Apple's stock prices have decreased by 2.7%. In fact, $290 billion has been wiped off Apple's value since September. The article explains that the last time, Apple's stock was so low was when Steve Jobs had passed away. The article also talks about how investors will only pay about $9 for a dollar profit, whereas for a different company such as Standard & Poor's 500 company, they will pay $15. This shows that Apple's investor loyalty is falling. Investors no longer see Apple as a "safe" investment, which is why they are no longer willing to invest in Apple. Investors are not sure of the direction that Apple is going, which is why they are reluctant to invest and take a risk.

This article is about a new spy plane that costs $195,000 and fits in the palm of your hand. Now the British soldiers will be a bit safer thanks to this little plane and it flies nearly silently. Prox Dynamics of Norway designed this little plane and it is only 4 inches long and 1 inch tall. This plane can provide videos to the soldiers hand from up to 1000 meters away. It has been used in Afghanistan since August of 2012 and has impressed so far. It is also very hard so see or hear. This article relates to the selected tag because it impacts the lives of both the locals and the military. It affects the locals because they do not have much privacy and security anymore due to this new spy plane. This is unethical and illegal because people want their privacy and if people are spying on them daily they are not secure. Even though it is unethical to do this I think that it would be much safer for most people to use this new plane. The only thing I do not understand is why the plane costs so much and if they will be able to reduce the price.  

This article takes the results of a research center which says that approximately 61 percent of Facebook users will take random breaks from the site, and can go for weeks at a time. The people who have answered this survey say they take time off of Facebook because A. Lack of time to dedicate to updating their profiles. B. They are losing interest in the site. or C. Facebook is a waste of time. I believe this is true because I personally have noticed that Facebook is slowly losing consumers to other social network such as Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Tumblr, ect. I also feel like this article is truthful because recently Facebook has been losing lots of its stocks, and its price for their stocks is below par compared to when they were starting up. This article relates to eLifestyle tag because this shows how people may be less reliable on their social network website (Facebook) and may be having a more social life, rather than being on the internet.

This article discusses the relationship between Apple and Samsung, who are fierce competitors in mobile device market. In very simple terms, Apple's handheld designs were at the least partially copied by Samsung, but suing them is difficult since they supply many of the hardware components, primarily processor chips, for Apple products themselves. Should Apple sue and win a lawsuit against the sale of Samsung products anywhere, Samsung would cut off their shipments, leaving room for other competitors to take the scene. This touches on the legal aspect of things because Apple has a right to the products they made and clearly copying them should not be allowed. The problem is that it would be lost money for both businesses because Samsung would cut off parts being supplied to Apple. This brings the need for cooperation between the two companies because if they both take a serious loss in the mobile device market other companies like LG, Nokia and Microsoft would take the lead and dominate the market.

The "Green Brain Project" aims to create an insectobot (a robotic insect) with the brain of a honey bee. It's not as crazy or difficult as it sounds though, the researchers working on this project are not directly copying a bees brain but trying to recreate it. More specifically they are recreating bees two most important senses- sight and smell. They will then upload this fake brain into a small insect like robot so it can act somewhat like a real honey bee. This is important, as it would be a huge step forward in robotics and also because scientists say they could use robotic bees to artificially pollinate. This could help  with the reduced number of honeybees. Bees are very important to the whole environment so this project could possibly be revolutionary. I chose the tag "environment" because scientist are trying to recreate a natural animal that not only comes from Earth but greatly impacts it. Plants need bees pollination to grow, and animals need plants to eat so with a lack of bees, the whole food web would take a major hit. This project aims to try to fix this. To me, it seems like it would be extremely expensive and difficult to create as many bees as the earth would need. Maybe in the distant future though, this may be realized.

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

Iphone just keeps getting better and better! There has now been 5 iphone cases that keep your earbuds tangle-free. No matter how hard you try to neatly tidy your Iphone headphones they always and up in a tangled mess. They have created 5 Iphone cases that cunningly conceal your headphones for tangle-free headphones. I think that this is quite unbelievable and actually quite useless because people are willing to pay more money because they don't like tangled messes!

This post is about an idea that Facebook is testing slowly in more and more countries as time goes by. Facebook is considering introducing "Promotions" to personal posts. What this means is basically that you can pay $7 to move your posts on facebook higher up in the news feed. This increases the chance of your friends seeing your post as it will be higher up in the news feed for a longer period of time. This is a test that is being used on facebook users with less than 5000 friends in the U.S. I find this strange, wouldn't it make more sense for facebook to test this feature on people with a higher number of friends? Moreover, I think that this is a bad idea coming from Facebook, because $7 dollars is likely more than the average annual revenue per individual user. For a multi-billion dollar company such as facebook, I think this is a greedy and unnecessary move on their behalf. They have more money than they could ever need, yet they want to charge $7 dollars to promote a post...This could work for business posts, however, to me it seems absurd for an individual to pay $7 dollars  to promote their post on facebook, which will likely only last near the top of the news feed for a couple of hours maximum.

With the thin, sleek design, the shiny screen, and the convenient touch screen, the iphone has grown to become one of the most wanted phones in our country. Behind the high-tech phones and tablets though there's a much more serious issue. Iphones are often created in factories in China that exploit their workers. Things like child labor and abuse are practiced often in these factories. However, this article didn't only bring up the issue of human rights violations, but also our role in it. In the past, companies like Nike have been forced to improve the quality and treatment in these factories after many people boycotted the brands once discovering the ethical issues in the production process. We have not let the exploitation of workers in China pass before, so why are we doing it now with these Apple products. Every time we lay down our money and pick up a new iphone or ipad, we are encouraging this type of production and becoming a part of it. Even our simple, silly complaints about the Apple products can make the conditions worse for those poor workers. They are forced to work even harder and longer, no matter how tired, underpaid and overworked they already are. Has it become important for us to own the best phone, that the rights and sufferings of other human beings no longer matters? Why are we not taking the action necessary to help those workers and send a clear message of opposition? Before, reading this article I also wanted an iphone. It's a great phone, very convenient and high-tech. Knowing the conditions these phones are made in though has started to really make me doubt what I used to consider an amazing phone. It's an ethical issue. Do I want this phone so badly that I'm willing to turn a blind eye to the places it came out of? What scared me was that as much as I knew what the clear answer was, it was still a hard decision to make. Exploiting other humans is wrong and no matter how big Apple is, they are not an exceptio

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.

While the tablet was originally supposed to be out in May, the date has been pushed back until July. Reasons being: they hope to make it more cheaper than what it was originally supposed to cost ($250). This is also because they are in competition with the Kindle Fire only costing $200. I think that this was a bold move for Google because it it makes sense that they would've seen a flop with their product because theirs would've been more expensive. While lowering the price would be beneficial for us, no one really knows if it'll be a success for them like the Kindle Fire was for Amazon.

This article talks about how they are thinking of making ATM machines that can read your palm. It can access your account just by scanning your hand. Then you can easily take out money without scrambling for your credit card. Now you don't need to worry about losing your credit card or even forgetting your pin number. I believe this is a good idea because it can make it easier for everyone to just scan their hands and get the proper amount of money out. I personally like this method better than using credit cards. This relates to the course because it takes a lot of programming to get these ATM machines to work, and also the actual ATM machine is a hardware.

Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank in Japan has revealed that it will introduce the nation's first ATM that lets you withdraw money just by scanning your palm. You wouldn't even need your credit card to verify that you can withdraw money from your account. I think this is a great idea. In Canada, we already have the device where it scans your chip, but it doesn't always work. For example, my dad had to send back his credit card 3 times before he finally got the chip to work. This is also very safe because every person has a different hand shape and "design" on their palms, no one would be able to imitate it. I hope that they come out with this machine in Canada soon, i'm sure it would be less stressful for many people.

This article talks about how in Japan they will soon have ATMs that let you withdraw money just by scanning your palm. This will come in handy when you have lost your card. Customers would first have to show identification for verification then they would scan your palm and can easily withdraw money from the bank. This new type of technology can be convenient because there would be less people stealing credit cards from other, and can withdraw anytime even when you forget your card.

This article is about the next generation of Macbook Pro's. Multiple Apple resellers are reporting  some of the current models as out of stock, including J&R and Best Buy. In fact, they are not accepting online orders at this point. Traditionally, the retail channel dries up as Apple shuts down production. This cleans the distribution channels out of units as they get ready to introduce fresh models into the market. There aren't many details on the incoming MacBook Pro 2012, but it's safe to expect that they will be much faster- using Core i7 Ivy Bridge processors.

This article is about the best ten waterproof smartphone cases. In this article, they have a brief description on the phone case and they also tell you the price of it. I find this very useful because people like my mom are always very scared of damaging their smartphones/iphones and they want the best case to protect it and this will help us choose a case to keep it safe. this relates to this class because we all have phones and we need to keep them safe.