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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.

For a service that had such an artificially high demand, the tech industry has not really capitalized on Video Chat. When Apple unveiled their video chat service 'FaceTime' in June of 2010, many thought that this would become the primary standardized service used by all. In practice, FaceTime is a clunky system that is evidently less productive and convenient than just vocal or text communication. So why hasn't video conferencing taken off as the industry had hoped? The answer is most likely because there is no standardized system and the market is too saturated; Polycom Inc. hopes to adress this issue by introducing a Universal Video Chat in early 2013. The product (called RealPresence CloudAxis) monetizes all of your contacts from Skype, Facebook, Google Talk and other apps into one place - all hosted on a web browser. This is a very ambitious task and if it delivers on what Polycom says (with the "same security and reliability as enterprise systems"), then there may be some validity to the video conference service. This relates to Privacy and Security because when monetizing a group of services, there is a chance for data leak and possible identity theft; Polycom promises to adress all security issues in order to make a safe and immersive experience for its users. This relates to eLifestyle because companies and their consumers have been trying for the past years to create a universal video chat service that actually worked in order to establish a multi-faceted social network: it might be too early to tell if Polycom has something that will fulfill the needs of consumers. This relates to ICS20 because as a class, we are no stranger to multiple accounts that often times serve the same purpose. As consumers, we hope for a streamlined service that can connect all of our multiple accounts into one place, preferably on a browser. It will be hard for Polycom, both legally and economically, to convince all of these pre-existing video chat developers to allow Polycom to

Online courses are now being used by students in university. This allows them to study and complete work from their own home, but the question asked by most is if the online course investment is worth it, in terms of careers. Lou Adler, (a self proclaimed hiring expert) believes not so, because when you take an online course,classes require you presenting your skills to your employer. An online course is not the same as a sit down university course, because it does not provide you with the practical skills necessary. Someone taking an online course can still have an advantage over people who commute to university. e.g. submitting a project you did using your computer, easily, and using it in a job application. You can distinguish yourself from others, using computer generated projects, etc. Depending on what field you want to get into, online courses can be harmful or helpful.

This article is basically about physcist developing a system in witch they use the suns energy to destroy or redirect asteroids from space. The earth at this period of time can easily be destroyed but a random asteroid from outer space. Asteroids are roughly the size of five football flieds long. The earth has recently dodged two asteroid threats on its own but may not be so lucky in the future. This is why Physicists Philip Lubin of University of California, Santa Barbara and Gary Hughes of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo started working on the DE-STAR proposal a year ago. Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids, an exploRation (DE-STAR). This system will use the suns solar energy to power a laser beam that can be used to shoot to destroy or redirect future asteroids that have been predicted to come and are a threat to human survival. For example asteroid 2012 DA14-a medium sized, 150 ft (50 m) rock weighing 143,000 tons-was closing in on us. They knew that it would miss us too, by 17,200 miles (27,700 km

This article is about the capital of Peru which is the second largest capital in the world located in a desert. It rarely rains which means that many residents are forced to get their water from dirty wells. The good thing is that the humidity there is 98% so the local University designed a billboard that's able to harvest the moisture in the air and turn it into potable water. The University teamed up with with an add agency to create the billboard. A series of five tanks located at the top of the tower can store up to 96 liters of water at any given time, and the liquid reserves are accessible from a single faucet located at the base of the billboard.  The water vapor is being pulled directly from the air and further processed by a filtration system. The water is guaranteed to be clean enough for drinking all year round. I think that this is a great invention and should be used in many other places around the world with a high humidity. This article relates to the selected tag of Environment because even though it doesn't damage the environment it is a renewable resource and will only benefit us in the future.They get the water vapor from the air and change it into water from the environment. 

This article tells the readers about 7 apps that were released this week. The seven apps are Pair, Bump Pay, Fuze HD, Babbel forAndroid, MTA or Merifian, Paper, and Wonders of the Universe.   Pair is an app for many of those who are in a long distance relationship. They allow couples to create a private timeline, swap photos, share videos, and their location. The app also has "thumb kiss" feature that vibrates the phone when they both touch the same part of the phone. This app is available for iPhones. Bump Pay is an app that allows you to pay others by simply "bumping" your phones together. You would pay them using PayPal. Fuze HD is an video conference app that allows others to have a video chat with up to ten people on at once. You could  also send text, images, and other media during the presentation. Babble for Android is a language app. It has over 3000 vocabulary words, sounds, images, speech recognition and a personalized review manager for multiple languages. MTA on Meridian is a app that you can use to browse art of particular line or plan your own transit system art tour. Paper is a new app that allows people to draw diagrams and sketches and shared them with others on the web. Wonders of the universe is an app that lets you explore space with graphics and visuals.  I think that this article is interesting because it tells me many of the apps that I didn't know about.

A fighter sim just isn't realistic unless it makes you throw up and scream for your mother, which is why the sadistic folks at Australia's Deakin University created the Universal Motion Simulator. It can mimic external disturbances, mechanical failures and crash scenarios as well as normal flying.

Researchers from University of Hawaii and University of Tokyo have teamed up to get a closer look on how sharks behave. The researchers strapped on a bunch of gadgets to a bunch of different sharks. The gadgets are a combination of a GoPro and a sportsband to monitor and video what sharks do in everyday life. The researchers were able to disprove misconceptions on how the animals move. Before, scientists thought that sharks glided effortlessly through the water, but in reality they actually power swim. The researchers also got some footage of the sharks underwater after jumping to catch a pray. The next step for these researchers is to create an ingestible device to get a better understanding of the sharks diet. They hope that this will help people to stop assuming that sharks only eat human limbs like they do in the movies. After watching the video attached to this article, I found it very interesting to see how the sharks moved around the water and to see what they saw when swimming.

This article give tips on choosing the career that make you proud. this article gives 5 tips that are very effective to make sure you enjoy doing the work you do.

Thoughts and opinions required in your posts for full marks

This article (written by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai) is an interesting analysis of a general trend in the tech industry and demand for people with coding experience. The article states that now is the best time to dive in to coding because it has never been cheaper/easier to do so, with the introduction of Codeacademy - used in ICS20 - in early 2012. In less than 5 months, Codeacademy had stated that it reached over 1 million registered accounts, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Many web-based companies, even the titans that are Facebook and Google, are always looking for people with coding experience. Jobs in programming are also more lucrative than most jobs, even at entry level positions (15 of 21 San Fransisco Developer Bootcamp students were offered jobs in coding, with an average annual pay of $79 000.) The industry is severely lacking in female programmers as well, with only 1:10 ratio of women to men in the industry. This relates to Economics, eLifestyle and ultimately the ISC20 class because as the industry develops, there will be a higher demand for people with experience in coding; 2012 has been widely concerned as the best year for coding because many people who start coding now will most likely be secured for a positon right out of University, which can be very securing to young people who may not be sure of their future. Evidentally, the title says it all; if you are looking for a job, it would be wise to pick up coding because this a newly establihed market; most jobs in computers didn't exist twenty years ago so many people believe that coding will eventually become a societal necessary education, like math or grammar skills. This article shows how we are in a somewhat technological revolution, where we are creating new jobs where all the others are already full.

This article talks about new gesture that could be used in addition to finger touch in order to have more options easily and launch new apps using your knuckle, fingertip, fingernail and more. A trio of Ph.D. students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh managed to modify a Samsung Galaxy SIII to accept input from all three different touch variations, and tell the difference between them. It accomplishes this with the help of a vibration sensor and software that listens for the acoustic differences that come with the different types of touches. A man named Harrison has already started a company called Qeexo to start selling this tech. This vibration sensor can easily be added to any smartphone's "guts" and the software added too.   This article has a lot to do with portable computing because different companies are always coming up with new innovative ways to make smart phones more "smart". This is one of those things that a new company called Qeexo is doing. They are looking to improve the options and speed of using a smartphone for example instead of opening up a note pad by going into the menu and clicking it with your finger, you can use the "shortcut" of taping your knuckle twice to open it. This can also be used in gaming, option menus etc.  The main point is that companies are always changing making technology much more natural and easy to use. I think that this is a very good idea and over time if people hear about this depending on how much this would cost to upgrade it may become big and even become a pre-installed feature. 

This article tells how the constant evolution of technology has enabled students to teach themselves without the need of a teacher. One way technology has been proven  to help students teach themselves is when the MIT Media Lab delivered tablets to schools in a remote village in Ethiopia. With only the tablets, the children taught themselves the ABCs and even found their way around restrictions MIT put into the tablets. Another way students can teach themselves with technology is proven is by an 11 year old girl  from Pakistan that passed a university level class even after the government blocked Youtube which was the source of the videos she used to study. Thanks to a Portugese professor who uploaded the videos to a website the girl could access, she was able to complete the course. Our access to technology influences us by allowing to be (mostly) self-sufficient since we do not have to rely on the help of teachers completely to learn. With this, students can get homework done more easily and be up to date on lessons taught in class. I think that students cannot teach themselves solely on technology since it isn't that evolved yet. I think this is a good thing that students cannot learn only with technology because in school, it is easier to learn things when someone else explains it to you, promotes more social interaction, saves the jobs of teachers, and makes it harder to procrastinate. I believe that eventually students will be able to learn at home with only the Internet because of how fast technology evolves and how much information is stored everyday.

In science it is known that Graphene was the lightest material known to man but now graphene aerogel is the lightest material in the world. Aerogel is nothing new. China's zhejiang University made some aerographene and has a density of 0.16 mg/cm3 compared to the previous lightest material aerographite with a density of 0.818 mg/cm3 . Building chunks of an almost weightless material involves high-tech freeze drying. Aerographene is extremely resilient and can mop up 900 times its weight in oil making it potentially indispensable as a clean-up sponge. 

This article is about Google's Nexus One Phone that was launched into space on Monday. It was launched into orbit aboard a CubeSat dubbed STRaND-1, which was developed by Surrey Satellite Technology at the University of Surrey's space centre. STRaND-1 now holds the honor of being the first PhoneSat and UK CbeSat that has ever made it into orbit. Alongside the HTC- made handset are an altitude and orbit control system, two propulsion setups and a Linux-based computer with a "high speed" processor. An app called 360 will let people back on terra firma request their own snapshots of earth taken with the phone's shooter and pin them to a map.

This article is about an article in a journal that stated researchers claim to have created a lithium ion microbattery with power densities up to 2000 times more powerful than comparable batteries. This article also talks about how technology is getting smaller but batteries are still big.  This University of Illinois team has created a super small and thin battery that can be recharged 1000 times faster than today's batteries.  the battery work by a chemical reaction inside the battery that causes the anode to release electrons. When the battery is "on" these electrons flow from the anode to the cathode thus provide far greater power density (output) and simultaneously support much faster charging. This team now just needs to achieve a commercially viable - and safe - battery breakthrough soon and then it could potentially be ready for the market..

This article is about meteors and how often they land on Earth. On Thursday Feb. 14/13 a meteorite fell to Earth in Russia overnight and so far 500 people have been injured. space rocks enter Earth's atmosphere all the time but most burn up before it can reach Earth's surface. A mineralogist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said that there are typically five to ten meteorite strikes around Earth per year but most we do not hear about or see because the Earth is about 70% water and most land there. This article relates to the Environment tag because even though it is very rare to see a meteorite hit Earth they can change the landscape and even the sometimes life. An example of this is with the dinosaurs or creating a crater hole which can later turn into a lake.

Space rocks as much as 100 feet wide are estimated to hit a hundred years or so. But, there are rare " killer asteroids" that can wipe out a city the size of Moscow and kill 30,000 in an instant. But the university of Hawaii's new meteor tracking systems come online, we'll be able to forecast meteor strikes as accurately as predicting when a blizzard is coming.  This device is known as ATLAS ( Asteroid terrestrial-impact Last Alert System). This device consists of a pair of observatories located about 60 miles apart, each equipped with four, 10-inch telescopes with 100 MP cameras. Together, these observatories would scan the sky 2 times a night. The telescope may be very small  but will be sensitive enough to spot and estimate an incoming threat in the exact location and time.  This project started since 2012 but got a a jump start with a $5 million grant by NASA.

As a social generation, we use various online 'social networks' to connect with others and share information (e.g. photos, text, videos.) But has anyone ever considered integrating one of these networks into a scholastic environment? This is exactly what Assistant professor of education at Michigan State University, Christina Greenhow has found in a recent study. While most say that social networks like Twitter are poisoning the minds of our youth, destroying their grammar and face-to-face skills, Greenhow finds that using Twitter in her class has allowed for more engaged students proven to attain higher grades. By integrating Twitter into some of the class' exercises, Greenhow was able to contextualize the material into something the students could relate to, "The students get more engaged because they feel it is connected to something real, that it's not just learning for the sake of learning." Twitter; something bored students would initially hide from teachers in class is now seeing some valid and practical applications in the classroom. This article relates to the tag "eLifestyle" because teachers are constantly trying to integrate web-based teaching into their classrooms in this constantly evolving technological age. This relates to ICS20 because we are one of the classes in the school on the forefront of technology, integrating web services such as Codeacademy, Diigo and even Twitter to enhance our learning experience. This article is not meant to give students excuses to wander off to Twitter during class, but to show teachers the validity in using a web-based social network to improve their teaching methods in the classroom.

Love this post. I've been thinking about this stuff for a while, as in - how do I work twitter into class activity? Any ideas?

Homophobic words have become increasingly integrated into casual speech, more than one would like to admit. This problem has been amplified substantially with the use of social networking sites, in particular, Twitter. The University of Alberta's Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services launched the website www.nohomophobes.com on September 26, 2012, and has been tracking tweets containing the words 'faggot,' 'so gay,' 'no homo,' and 'dyke' since July. The site displays the numbers in current, weekly, and all-time charts, and updates in real time. A live feed lists the tweets containing the phrases as well.  As of 1:23pm on October 22, 2012, the number of tweets with the word 'faggot' broke 10,000. It is disheartening to see how such a hurtful word could be used so nonchalantly during the day. Since July 5, 2012, there have been about 3.27 million 'faggot' tweets, 1.16 million 'so gay' and 'no homo' tweets, and over 450,000 'dyke' tweets. As the site header reads, "Homophobic language isn't always meant to be hurtful, but how often do we use it without thinking?" This article is tagged under eLifestyle because our generation uses social networking sites daily. Although people may use these phrases without harmful intentions, they are still there for everyone to see on the internet. It is a real eye-opener to watch the numbers rise so quickly, from just one social network. As students and future leaders, we must give extra thought to what we post, and who it might harm when we use these social networks.

This article is about how Facebook created a new feature to their website. They allow many students to collaborate with other students and faculty members to share documents that aren't copyrighted. Since, many have left Facebook for other social networking sites and have become bored of it Facebook this new group will attract them to come back. I think that this new feature they added will attract many more users, especially those who are in colleges and universities because it is an easy way to communicate to those in your classes and it is user friendly.