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On February the 23rd, Microsoft made a few announcements on their Windows Phone. The new update 8.1 will have more flexible support for hardware and the phone will be able to use dual-SIM, apps on microSD and virtual softkeys instead of the original capacitive keys. The Windows phones will also not be required to have a hardware camera shutter key which people are excited for. The new update is refreshing and the updated hardware opens up more ability for the market to grow. I personally think this is a great move for Windows because it adds the options that their customers have been asking for. It has also been said on a similar article that the new update will allow Windows hardware to work on other phone companies such as Android. This might not be a good idea because people might not find the need to use the hardware if they already have one on their phone. Personally, if I wanted to use the Windows hardware, I would just buy a Windows Phone instead of downloading it on my existing one.

The Bitcoin and "Coin" are two different virtual currencies with no intrinsic value, but still give the capability to purchase whatever you want as a consumer. Bitcoin is a digital crypto-currency that is ran over the internet. It runs off of bitcoin miners and traders. The currency "coin" however, still uses your countries own currency. It is a beta-project of a credit card, that can hold all of your cards into one. You can have your debit, visa, and mastercard all on the coin. This simplifies purchasing goods because you only need one card that can do many specific things. This article compares the two types of future currency. After reading this article I believe the "Coin" is a safer and more reliable option. It allows us to use actual tangible money, and this money is non-volatile and regulated by the government unlike Bitcoin which goes through many spikes in prices.

AllSee, a new piece of technology that will probably cause a lot of problems. This product is very similar to the XBOX Kinect, but it does not use the camera that kinect does. Personally, i have not used the Kinect myself, but many people say that it does not respond to movement very well. AllSee, on the other hand will match what Kinect does but without the camera. In my opinion, i think that this product will be very effective. It will probably do better that the Kinect did. This will probably change the way the gesture control is used.

When you have a messy inbox, utilize "SaneBox" for all your organizational needs! Most of us have experienced inbox flooding, so SaneBox is a must-have for any people looking to prioritize. What's different about SaneBox is the way it uses your email. It analyzes your email relationships and decides what's important based on previous actions. Then, it summarizes your mail into a daily digest so you don't miss out on what's important to you. It "literally" saved the author of this article 2 hours when going through his inbox. SaneBox also includes productivity apps and customizable setting, so another plus. I guess using this is a possibility, seeing how most of my inbox is spam. If SaneBox realized that all I ever click on is account confirmation emails, and that nothing else even matters, that would be the greatest.

The article that I have chosen to share for week 4 is about IBM and their new services to help eliminate fraud and financial crime. The article interested be because around 3.5 trillion dollars are lost per year to financial crime and fraud through technology. While the software is being marketed to big companies it also directly involves us, the consumers. For example when Sony's PSN was down thousands of peoples accounts were hacked and had money taken from their accounts. This new software interested me because now people can feel a little more secure using online programs knowing that their information can be safer. It is a new time where many things are bought through the internet and with better security people won't feel as worried about their security

The article that I have chosen to share for week 4 is about IBM and their new services to help eliminate fraud and financial crime. The article interested be because around 3.5 trillion dollars are lost per year to financial crime and fraud through technology. While the software is being marketed to big companies it also directly involves us, the consumers. For example when Sony's PSN was down thousands of peoples accounts were hacked and had money taken from their accounts. This new software interested me because now people can feel a little more secure using online programs knowing that their information can be safer. It is a new time where many things are bought through the internet and with better security people won't feel as worried about their security

For about a century, scientists thought that human noses were able to recognize 10,000 different odours. Although this has been true for a number of years, new research shows that we can actually detect over 1,000,000,000,000 distinct scents. That is over a trillion different smells. Leslie Vosshall and colleagues, who work at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, says that the 10,000 number had to be wrong. They considered that the human eye perceives 10 million different colours using only 3 types of light receptors, and the human nose has 400 different receptor types in comparison. Vosshall and her team created an experiment to prove this new theory, but because testing a trillion different scents would take eternity, the team crafted never-before-smelled scents composed of 10-30 odour ingredients. Each volunteer in the experiment smelled 264 different groupings of odours and then the team used that data to determine how many different scents the average human could identify. This is very cool new information that I have learned because it shows us that we are capable of so much more than we expect ourselves to be capable of. Considering that the whole existence of the human race could be wiped out by one single infection, this information reminds me that humans are too awesome to go into extinction.

This app viaProtect is an app for your iphone that monitors where your data is going and where its coming from. This app makes sure that your data for your phone is secure and you are aware of it. When you use this app, it will analyse your phone and will provide a risk score. this app will not solve all your security problems with your iphone, but it will increase your awareness about where your data is going. I would be interested in using this app but it is only available for iphone. i think that this app is very useful, so you know that your data maybe going somewhere else or coming from somewhere else.

A scam that takes advantage of Google Docs is making is spreading throughout the web. It uses the same google.com URL and even makes us of Google's SSL encryption. It is very difficult to tell that it is a hack. The scam starts with an email that leads to a GoogleDocs link. It then takes you to a fake login screen. Once you login, you'll be taken to an actual google doc but your credentials will be sent to a PHP script on a compromised server. To avoid this, you must be careful when clicking on links sent in emails, and if the login does not recognize you as a google user, the you should notice that it is the fake log in page. This is actually scary, and everyone should always be aware of their emails and scams.

This article is about a bio-organic battery by StoreDot, which uses quantum dot technology to charge a phone from flat to full in 30 seconds. There is currently only a prototype and the tech used has not yet been shrinked so that if is small enough to fit inside phones. The battery is famous for its amazing charging speed for a smartphone. The info of this technology is from research being done into Alzheimer's disease. The work is called peptides (amino acids), the company uses these molecules to create nano-crystals. The only disadvantage said by StoreDot is that the ecosystem is not ready because this is a brand new type of material. This creation is great but then it has some risks because of the new type of technology and it may affect the environment negatively.

This article talks about a "selfie" (self-taken photo) taken by MLB Red Sox' player David Ortiz with the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. The picture was used by Samsung for an ad which raised many questions for the White House. Obama did not know that "Big Papi" (David Ortiz) had connections with Samsung and did not know about the financial benefits. David Ortiz is being payed by Samsung for this photo which he also posted on twitter. Officials are saying that they are not going to take any action to take down the photo but also say that they have not approved of this photo.

For uploads of images and the like. Imgur is the leader in free image hosting, with a simple to use image hosting service with no extra perks. One of the things that I like about imgur are the small links, because they are very copy/pastable. Second in line, is flickr. Less like imgur, and more like a social networking site. It is geared more towards sharing. It contains massive amounts of storage for your photos, 1TB to be exact, just by signing up. So flickr seems to be more personalized than imgur, and that's not a problem. For a commoner like me, I'd just rather use imgur. Expect a photographer to use flickr. Next up is photobucket which is the same as flickr in many regards. Imageshack is an alternative to imgur if you want crop your image or add special effects after you finish uploading. Freeimagehosting.net is sort of a competitor... and the last two happen to be gimmicks, postimage.org and imgplace.com

The smartphone wars are taking a turn for the worse. Last week both apple and Samsung companies made patent infringement lawsuits against each other. Apples lawsuit of 2 billion dollars against Samsung is for use of the slide-to-unlock feature, auto word correction, universal search of the phone, and Internet and background syncing of data. While Samsung's 7 million dollar lawsuit against Apple is for the use of remote video transmission and on digital imaging. I believe that apples case is a little childish compared to Samsung's especially with the part about the slide to unlock future. Samsung's case seems to be about more important matters like using its camera and the remote control patents. I personally would like Samsung to win because I prefer their products and customer service over Apple's.

Union is a new type of "Photoshop" app for your phone. This clever app allows you to load multiple images and blend them together in creative ways. This app allows for double exposure on photos for a cool effect, or simply making certain layers of photos transparent. The blending of pictures and using certain effects allows users to get very professional and artistic looking photos. This app also includes tutorial videos on how to use the app for particular artistic ideas. Photos created can then be transferred to your camera roll or other large social media outlets such as twitter and instagram. I personally believe this app is great because I have used many "photo shop" apps and they have all been lacking a certain something while Union seems to provide everything I need to edit multiple photos.

An awesome display of how todays technological advancements can be so easy to use yet so very helpful when they are most needed. A simple free application installed on a man's laptop saves him over $2000! I believe that this article displays how truly advanced our world has become over the past decade or so. This article relates to our everyday world because laptops are stolen all the time, and it explains how easy it can be to track down the thieves that take these laptops using todays advanced tracking applications. I am truly in awe of today's technological progress within all of the tools that we use every day like ipods, laptops and phones, and i know for a fact that the app prey and many other stolen phone track apps are available for free through many different types of app stores. Don't put it off download your very own tracking app before its too late

yessss pegggsss :P

3M and IBM found a simpler way to make processors 1,000 times faster, not by creating new circuitry, but with glue. This is not just any kind of glue. It's glue that dissipates heat so effectively that you could stack layers of chips, glued together with this special adhesive that keeps things cool. This results in faster computer chips for computers, laptops and anything else that uses microprocessors. This special adhesive would be great for IBM, 3M and for us because they would be earning money while their customers(that's us) would be enjoying their computers now compared to before the "special adhesive" was made. 

Google is taking one step forward in personal protection with their recently added feature. By automatically adding an "s" to http at the begining of the URL, they are encrypting the website and protecting its viewers from being seen by random people snooping around their searches, by making it more difficult to do so. This feature will soon be an available setting for Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, and Internet Explorer servers. Firefox users can install HTTPS Everywhere extention. Chrome and Chromium users can right click on the URL bar and add an "s" to the end of the "http". Internet Explorer users can add the setting in IE add-ons page.

Everyone has used google at one point in their lives. Well, a new revolution of google is on its way. When we google something have you noticed besides the 'www.' there is an 'http://'. This is means that your search worked but it isn't encrypted. This means that people can see what you're searching. With a new google search engine under development, the search engine revolution will advance. Instead of having to look for the website or whatever you're searching for, which sometimes makes me want to pry my eyes out of my head, the new google plans to take you directly to the website you searched for. What about 'http://' or whatever you ask? Another feature the new google will have is using the 'https://' system. The 's' at the end of the 'http' means 'secured', so basically no one can see what you're searching besides google itself. In other, more technical words, your data is encrypted. Looking forward to the new future of google!

German states used malware to spy on their citizens. Infected computers were able to be turned on and used remotely by the German government. This included the government being able to track what the person was typing and turning their webcam on/off.

QR codes are a picture that when scanned, either brings a website or information up on your phone. The technology has great potential, but the only place where people are actually using it to its advantage is in Japan. In North America, all it's doing is bringing people to third-party websites that either give your phone a virus or send so many texts that your bill is ridiculously high. So why are we using this amazing technology for such bad uses?

There have been over thousands of Apps that are made all over the world.  Today, technology is getting faster and faster each and everyday.  But have you thought back on the apps that were once use everyday? According to this article, Google Goggles, My Tracks, Bump and many more.  My tracks is a GPS for your cellphone where you are able to track where you go while you are biking or running.  This app will help you find your way back home or anywhere you are leaving.  Bump used to be one of the firsts apps that was able to blew people's minds.  If you have two smartphones with Bump installed, you can instantly share contact information. Nowadays, the app Bump is automatically installed in the SG3 phone. There are many apps that were mentioned in this article that has been useful in the past few years. Many phones that are being released or has been already, have most of these apps already installed onto their phone without knowing.