Fabroa ICS2O

In British Colombia a research team with the help of satellite-imaging companies are able to monitor changes in the environment such as forestry. This satellite imaging will help detect threats to forests such a Wildfires, insect infections, and deforestation. I really like how today's technology is being used to help the environment rather than just creating pollution from CO2 and old computer parts. Also I believe that this kind of work is really important especially with the kind of deforestation we see in the Amazon. Also I believe that the money governments put into things that benefiting our environment should be research projects like this rather than final products. All in all I believe that this a great way to aid the planet and further our technology.

Sony is developing a new virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 4. This headset will have1080p quality with a 90 degree field of view. The headset is very stylish and refined compared the other giant in virtual reality technology, the oculus rift. Morpheus (codename for the vr headset) will be the only competition for Oclulus Rift concerning customers seeking virtual reality gameplay. Although we don't know yet if Morpheus out performs the rift I believe that there will be a virtual reality was between the two. Being a gamer myself, I really like the possibility of virtual reality gameplay. Unfortunately at the moment the Morpheus is not for me because prefer playing games on the pc and will probably never buy a next gen console.

As technology constantly evolves, we replace our old electronics with brand new ones. on average, Canadian households have 24 electronic devices. When our old electronics go past their useful life, they become e-waste. In Canada, e-waste is a big issue. Environent Canada estimates that 140,000 tonnes and counting of e-waste is dumped in landfills every year. These electronics include harmful materials such as arsenic, mercury, and lead. Many of the electronics we buy were developed with planned obsolescence, which is planning to design a product with a life span. This is good for manufacturers, because it encourages consumers to buy their new products sooner, as these companies use cheaper components. Instead of old electronics dumped in the landfill, they can be recycled and used for new products. When planning to buy a new product, it is best to read reviews of the product and check if it lasts for a long time, or uses recyclable materials. Also, the cheapest model might not always be the best, and quality may come at increasing costs. in my opinion, if electronic companies plan for sooner obsolescence for their products, they should try to use more recyclable materials, and try to use less of materials that are harmful to the environment.

Admit it, if you have a smartphone, you're probably glued to it. It goes everywhere with you, and you use it all the time, even in school, where it's a big distraction. In South Korea, the most wired country in the world, some schools are remotely disabling students smartphones in school via an app called iSmartKeeper. With the app, teachers can lock all the phones in the school, only allow emergency calls, only allow texts and calls, disable specific apps, and unlock the phone during breaks. The app also uses geofencing that puts the restrictions on the phones when the students enter the school premises. Parents are also provided with a management app that allows these restrictions to be put in place when their teens are doing their homework. In Seoul, the app has been trialed in 11 schools, and the results were mixed. Many students rooted their phones to avoid the restrictions, and the geofencing sometimes didn't leaving the phones to be locked after the students left school. This app is for Android only due to the popularity of local brands like Samsung, however, iOS users should beware, as an iOS version is coming next month.. I think some advantages are it minimizes distractions and encourages students to be more focused on their studies. However, it may anger many students initially. No word yet if the app will be available outside South Korea.

This article is talking about how a company in Las Vegas has opened up an electronic waste facility in Cincinnati. A new 50,000 square-foot facility was opened up in Northwest Boulevard in Cincinnati a few weeks ago. The goal of this facility is to recycle any old computers, monitors, TVs and any other electronic devices. This will help lessen and eventually stop E-Waste being dumped in landfills. The president of the company E-Waste said that if it has a battery or has been plugged in, bring it to our facility. I think this is a really good idea, because it will slowly stop all the junk being dumped in landfills and who knows where else, and now it can be recycled and maybe reused.

Microsoft has created a website for people to safely dispose of old electronics. The website also gives information on buying certified eco-friendly pc's and their use. Microsoft is trying to save energy and keep the world green.

Once again it is a race for the worst company in the United States of America. The matchups are good but Electronic Arts will be going for the win as they have won the last two years and are now going for the hat-trick. EA has been delaying a lot of games and has had plenty of launch problems. Who will the winner be?

This article is about how Apple plans to increase its music sales by bringing iTunes to Android and launching a paid music subscription service. Google has already brought their Google Play Music to iOS devices. Even though Apple takes up about 40% of the U.S. digital music market, it has declined in the double digits in the past few years. They plan to expand to Android and open its store to hundreds of millions of users. I don't think this will work good for Apple because there already so many other music services such as Spotify, Pandora, Beats Music and Google Play Music itself on Android, and most people these days just download their music online because they do not want to spend lots of money to buy a song or an album.

Computers were first created in the 1940's and by the end of 2002, one billion computers have been sold worldwide. The increase of computers being sold each year has been creating large amounts of electronic waste and can be a source of toxins if not treated appropriately. The problem that we are facing is that an average 24-kilogram desktop computer requires at least 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to be made. Compared to automobiles or refrigerators that only require 1-2 times their weight in fossil fuels, computers have become a serious problem for our environment. By throwing out your old computers, it adds to the mountain of electronic garbage that helps to increase environmental pollution and global climate change. Since this is a problem, most people today are encouraged to recycle computer components so they could be used again. The recycling not only helps the environment but it also eliminates the need to dig out the fossil fuels from nature. I personally believe that the act of recycling these old computers is great for the environment and will help us to save the natural fossil fuels that we so very often use up. The other good news is that companies are now creating their computers from recycled materials to help out on the recycling process.

According to this article, when it comes to computers and the environment the main concern comes from the consequences created when disposing the machine. Overtime, the amount of computer sales have been skyrocketing. This increase, coupled with changing technology, led to large amounts of electronic waste. The metals commonly found in PC's are aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, gold, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, palladium, platinum, selenium, silver and zinc. Eight of the metals are listed as hazardous. I think that this article is true. Many people don't understand that computers need to recycled properly. If people were to start recycling their computers, i think our environment would look better.

The main concern with computers is the process of creating and disposal. The number of computers being made increases as demand goes up, and this has lead to mass electronic waste. This waste tends to be toxic and damaging to the environment. An average computer will use up ten times its weight in fossil fuels to make. As this is a big issue, the UN decided to review the complications it may have in the future. Significant energy use, long term health affects on people, and long term impacts on the environment are all problems. Solutions to this are viable though. Recycling from people and corporations go a long way. Selling of unused parts is always an option, or even a charity donation. This is a problem now, but might not have to be. Computer recycling is a big motion being taken by businesses, because it happens to be cost-effective and good for the environment. Only good things I have to say about the progression of environmental impacts of tech. Let's hope for a continuing trend.

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.

When people decide they have no use for old technology and do not think twice before throwing it out, they probably do not realize that their outdated piece of hardware finds its grave half way across the world. Possibly even in Guiyu, China where the largest electronic waste or "E-waste" dump site exists. People are oblivious to the fact that this is a recurring problem, not just a small matter of sorting and recycling through a few pieces of plastic, metal and wires. This black hole of scrapped computers, television sets, air conditioners and even refrigerators is toxic towards the environment, and is contaminating the growth of crops all around the area, such as rice, from the gases of the poisonous elements contained within the gadgets to make them work. The consuming pile of E-waste is not just environmentally deadly but also causes health hazards, along with the expensive and dangerous recycling operations that are needed. If people continue to neglect this issue, E-waste will continue to grow, swallow the earth with a blanket of harmful bi-products and affect everyone's lives, which is something we do not want. E-waste is hazardous and will eventually kill the planet with the path that it seems to be following without any real rise against the issue. This is such a nice way to give back to the environment don't you think? Polluting the earth and by proxy ourselves with technological garbage is obviously a smart thing to do, as if we aren't destroying the world enough already.

In this article it talks about how computers are a bigger threat to the enviroment than SUVs! They say that because a lot of computers are not very energy effeicient and they waste a ton of electricity. And in the report, An Inefficient Truth it says that with mopre than 1 billion computers on the planet they are responsable for about 2% of human carbon dioxide emissions. In the article it says that one of the biggest issues is the fact that with SUVs you can clearly see that it damages the enviroment but with computers nobody really sees it as a problem so nobody tries to fix it. I can certainly see that computers are a problem for the enviroment and the biggest issue is that they can only grow in size.

The future of gaming is set and Sony has clearly decided to be apart of it. At a recent conference, the company displayed a sleek prototype of a headset that will give players a high definition, panoramic view of the game as if they were present in the server, all in 3D. Sony has already sold thousands of headsets to developers and is inspired and encouraged to make their own virtual reality game and are looking forward to working with new technology. I think that this new format of gaming would be really interesting and futuristic. Certainly, the game play would be more realistic as I don't think there would be as much restrictions to pressing a sequence of buttons, when technically using the headset would allow you to act out exactly what you want to happen. Although I am aware of the dangers of virtual reality due to a specific anime, the fact that technology has made it so far is purely amazing.

A man has created a controller out of an empty lotion bottle, because why not. The creator said that "mouse and keyboard games are pretty common, so I thought I'd make a weird controller." I honestly think that this is a great idea. The character in game is just a lotion bottle with wings. This is probably not a game that anyone would play constantly, but it is a game nonetheless. The fact that he made a controller out of a lotion bottle, surprises me. It makes me think about the many other possibilities that can happen.

Just when you thought that the Apple-Samsung dispute was long gone, the two rivaling tech companies will once again appear in court next week in Silicon Valley. As usual, they are accusing each other of ripping off designs and features. Apple is accusing Samsung of infringing on 5 patents including Samsung's popular Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Samsung on the other hand is accusing Apple of stealing ideas to use on Apple's iDevices. According to Apple attorneys, Apple "revolutionized the market in personal computing devices, while Samsung "systematically copied Apple's innovative technology and products. Samsung in defense says that it has been a "pioneer in the mobile business sector since the inception of the mobile device industry, and that Apple copied many of Samsung's innovations on Apple's iDevices. Some things Apple claims that Samsung copied are tap to search technology, and "slide to unlock" the latter in my opinion, is not true. However, each smartphone has many patents, but Apple is only challenging 5 of them. personally I think that Apple and Samsung devices are very different. Sure some features may be similar or identical, but that's just to have competition. Although both of them are innovators, I think that Samsung/Google is innovating more nowadays than Apple.

Amazon already has an online grocery shopping business with competitive prices and same or next day shipping. This business venture is called amazon fresh. Amazon Fresh has also announced a new gadget that aids their website. "Dash" allows you to automatically scan barcodes to order food, or speaking into a mic for a certain need of food. "Dash" is completely changing the world of online grocery business'. The problem is though, that this service will cost up to 300$ a year for the same-day+next day shipping. In my opinion I would personally purchase this if I lived in an area that was Amazon Fresh supported. Toronto is still not on the list yet for delivery.

Unlocking an iPhone is now illegal. Any smartphone bought after January 26, 2013 can not be unlocked as it is illegal in the USA at least. Although unlocking an iPhone is illegal jailbreaking is not. At least it is legal to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch but to jailbreak an iPad is illegal. With all this in mind the real winner is the carrier/provider as the consumer cannot jump from company to company with the carriers phone. Only in the states can one go to jail for unlocking a phone but can own an assault rifle!

Some game developers are tired of pirates taking their game at no cost. Some game developers have implemented ways to trick the pirate as the list shows. Some like Alan Wake allow you to play the whole thing but others like Serious Sam 3 won't let you past the first mission by putting in an immortal enemy. These are 8 funny ways to mess with the pirates but there are many more...

A survey reviled that more than nine out of ten teenagers lose sleep because of their smartphones. They lose a few house checking their phone, texting, or watching videos. I find that these kinds of reports are really saddening. These kinds of diversions from everyday life and sleep can be devastating. Another study proved that about one out of ten people had a present sleep after using their electronics before going to sleep. This will probably cause a drop in grade averages and destroy the future of great nations. I myself had been doing this last year and found myself almost missing the bus and my grades slipping. Although technology is good like everything it must be used in moderation so we don't harm ourselves.

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.