4K. Yeah, those "expensive" (but coming down in price) televisions in Best Buy that look so damn good. You look at one and immediately notice the colors are rich, saturation is perfect, glare is minimal, the focus and image is crisp, and they're commonly so thin and premium looking. But they're overhyped, and for all the wrong reasons.
Lets start with what 4K is. Its a display with a resolution of 3840 pixels × 2160 lines, adding up to a pretty large 8.3 million pixels. Each of these pixels must be updated each time the image changes, which takes stronger horsepower, or Graphics Prossessor Unit, to push all of these 8.3 Megapixels. So immediately, there are two more costly components to manufacture: a higher resolution panel, and a faster GPU. Alright, so these are the only differences between 4K T.V.s and 1080p ones? No, and that is where the blur between what truely makes 4K great, and what many people look over.
The colors. They look so vibrant, so rich, so lucious. Watching the gazelle dash across a rich golden meadow has never looked nearly as good as it does when you look at it on that Sony 4K television. You take a gandering look over at the 1080p T.V. to the left and are immediately struck by how dull the colors look. Everything has a shade of white to it, and there is even a slight glimmer of the bright flourescent lights flashing on the screen, with no such case occuring on that fancy 4K T.V. What's the deal? Well, as I explained earlier, 4K just refers to the number of pixels on the screen, and has nothing to do with colors at all. So why are the colors better? Well, for two reasons mainly. When you buy a 4K T.V., the main reason it costs so much is because of three main reasons: you're paying for a new technology, so the cost upfront to manufacture runs higher. It also costs more for the increased resolution and processing unit. However, what makes those colors so good? Well, you know all of that extra cost you'd be paying? Well, a large part of that goes into a plastic front panel. On top of every display panel (the panel that contains the pixels), a plastic panel sits on top, but unfortunately, this panel, which is quite cheaply produced to keep costs down in 1080p T.V.s, can cause glare and a loss of color accuracy. However, since you're paying sooo much of a premium for a 4K T.V., manufacturers such as Sony and Samsung can afford to put a very expensive plastic piece inbetween you and the display panel, and this minimizes nearly all glare and color loss. So next time you are looking at 4K T.V.s, you, the educated reader, will know that its not the pixels that make it pretty looking, but that there is a nice, glare-free, expensive piece of plastic making everything gleam with bright colors.
-509 words
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Everything You Write Is Plagiarism
You, stop! Stop plagiarising. Everything you write is plagiarism. Everything you speak is copying. Everything you have thought has been put in exact words. Even your teachers are plagiarising every minute of every day. All your class mates are plagiarising too. Because everything you, your classmates, your teacher, your parents write, is plagiarism. How, one might ask? Well, lets review the plagiarism definition:
"The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing it off as one's own." Not only are you plagiarising, but I'm plagiarising this entire blog post. Take a look for yourself:
See, right there! In the bold text! I totally just copied and pasted the beginning of this blog post from...wait...what is all that gibberish?? Well, I welcome you, reader, to the Library of Babel.
The Library of Babel. It orginated as a concept from the book named no other than,"The Library of Babel," published in the year 2000. In the book, a magical library exists that has not only holds past knowledge in the universe, but has every single thing that has and will ever be said. Cool concept, sure, too bad it doesn't exist....but it does. Yeah, I know what your thinking....because its technically already in the Library of Babel. A genius by the name of Jonathan Basile wrote a computer algorithm to randomly generate trillions upon trillions of pages of a computerized library containing every single 3,200 character essay, paper, paragraph, whatever you name it, that will be ever created. While it is true that Basile did not create every single piece of writing that his computer algorithm did, it is true that everything you or I write has already been written, and we take credit for what we have written, even though it has already been written by someone else, or in this case, by SOMETHING else, a computer. But created by computer or human, it has been created, and we are taking credit for something that has already been created, and that, in my book, makes everything that humanity will ever write in the future plagiarism.
Sources: http://futurism.com/meet-the-digital-library-of-babel-a-complete-combination-of-every-possible-combination-of-letters-ever/
-352 words
"The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing it off as one's own." Not only are you plagiarising, but I'm plagiarising this entire blog post. Take a look for yourself:
The Library of Babel. It orginated as a concept from the book named no other than,"The Library of Babel," published in the year 2000. In the book, a magical library exists that has not only holds past knowledge in the universe, but has every single thing that has and will ever be said. Cool concept, sure, too bad it doesn't exist....but it does. Yeah, I know what your thinking....because its technically already in the Library of Babel. A genius by the name of Jonathan Basile wrote a computer algorithm to randomly generate trillions upon trillions of pages of a computerized library containing every single 3,200 character essay, paper, paragraph, whatever you name it, that will be ever created. While it is true that Basile did not create every single piece of writing that his computer algorithm did, it is true that everything you or I write has already been written, and we take credit for what we have written, even though it has already been written by someone else, or in this case, by SOMETHING else, a computer. But created by computer or human, it has been created, and we are taking credit for something that has already been created, and that, in my book, makes everything that humanity will ever write in the future plagiarism.
Sources: http://futurism.com/meet-the-digital-library-of-babel-a-complete-combination-of-every-possible-combination-of-letters-ever/
-352 words
Streaming Apps?
For quite a while now, streaming has been a pretty big thing. Streaming has been around since the dawn of YouTube at the beginning of the 21 century, the streaming of Netflix or Amazon Prime movies/T.V shows, or streaming music such as Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Soundcloud....yeah, the list of companies that allow streaming of digital content is almost endless! Almost any consumable medium can be streamed...except apps.
Apps, since the dawn of the Apple App store in 2008, have required the user to go to the App Store of choice, click download, sometimes prompting for a password, enter the password, wait for the app to download and then install, and then open the app to finally do what the user wanted to do. Doesn't sound like that much work, but its a hassle for some. If I go to facebook.com on my phone, I want it to seemlessly open an interface that I can use Facebook on, not prompt me to,"Click here to install our mobile app, then, after its downloaded 40MB a few minutes later, you can open it, then enter your sign in credentials, and then finally, if you can remember what you were doing, go do it!". Hence, we have mobile sites (such as m.facebook.com), but these mobile sites, while vastly improved over the dawn of the mobile internet era, are still not as great as their app equivalents due to web browser limitations. There has long been the need for a middle ground between a crippled web user interface, and the need to download apps that may only needed for a one-time use scenario, such as if I were to book a hotel, but not feel obligated to download Travelocity's app just for one night booking of a room. This is where Google's new innovation steps in: streaming apps.
Streaming apps would be made possible by Google's remote cloud servers running layers of virtualization to basically run the app in the cloud, and then send the data to the user. However, this method of delivery does require a strong WiFi connection, as the responsiveness of the app is heavily dependent on the data transfer speeds, but also low latency, something that is hard to acheive on a mobile network in all areas. If a fast network weren't available, the streaming app concept would crumble, as there would be too much delay between a user's touch action and the animations and transitions of the app.
Overall, I love the concept, and I hope Google implements it within a lot of apps soon. While I think it makes no sense to stream apps such as games quite yet, though Nvidia has commited to the idea with its Shield console and streaming games, I believe that streaming small apps that will only be used once or twice in a long while is more worthwhile, such as Hotwire, for spontaneous hotel bookings. I look forward to this project moving forward in the future: who knows, maybe one day, every app will be streamed!
-515 words
Apps, since the dawn of the Apple App store in 2008, have required the user to go to the App Store of choice, click download, sometimes prompting for a password, enter the password, wait for the app to download and then install, and then open the app to finally do what the user wanted to do. Doesn't sound like that much work, but its a hassle for some. If I go to facebook.com on my phone, I want it to seemlessly open an interface that I can use Facebook on, not prompt me to,"Click here to install our mobile app, then, after its downloaded 40MB a few minutes later, you can open it, then enter your sign in credentials, and then finally, if you can remember what you were doing, go do it!". Hence, we have mobile sites (such as m.facebook.com), but these mobile sites, while vastly improved over the dawn of the mobile internet era, are still not as great as their app equivalents due to web browser limitations. There has long been the need for a middle ground between a crippled web user interface, and the need to download apps that may only needed for a one-time use scenario, such as if I were to book a hotel, but not feel obligated to download Travelocity's app just for one night booking of a room. This is where Google's new innovation steps in: streaming apps.
Streaming apps would be made possible by Google's remote cloud servers running layers of virtualization to basically run the app in the cloud, and then send the data to the user. However, this method of delivery does require a strong WiFi connection, as the responsiveness of the app is heavily dependent on the data transfer speeds, but also low latency, something that is hard to acheive on a mobile network in all areas. If a fast network weren't available, the streaming app concept would crumble, as there would be too much delay between a user's touch action and the animations and transitions of the app.
Overall, I love the concept, and I hope Google implements it within a lot of apps soon. While I think it makes no sense to stream apps such as games quite yet, though Nvidia has commited to the idea with its Shield console and streaming games, I believe that streaming small apps that will only be used once or twice in a long while is more worthwhile, such as Hotwire, for spontaneous hotel bookings. I look forward to this project moving forward in the future: who knows, maybe one day, every app will be streamed!
-515 words
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Tesla: The Car Is LEARNING!
A few weeks ago, I talked about TeslaOS 7.0, which released a beta feature that allowed the car to self-drive itself. Once the user is, say, driving down a road at 55mph, the user can click the "Cruise" control button and take their hands completely off of the wheel. The car will stay in its current lane and continue the same speed at the same time. If a deer pops out infront of the driver, the car will auto-brake, and if a car is driving slowly upfront, the car will adjust its speed. It takes cruise control to a whole new automated level. If on the interstate, and the driver turns on the left turn signal, the car will automatically switch lanes to the left when deemed safe, and then continue in that lane at that speed while the driver relaxes, sipping away at their coffee and chatting on the phone as if their car driving itself was no big deal.
However, there is a caveat to the whole experience. While Telsa's engineers have spend years on this project, there are still certain risks, and since self-driving is still, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk pulled a smart liability claim by making the statement that,"We’re advising drivers to keep their hands on the wheel. The software — it’s very new,” he said. But he added: “In the long term, people won’t need hands on the wheel.” Backing this up, Musk announced that the car had self-learning capabilities programmed in, a smart artificial intelligence that, over the course of hundreds of millions of miles, would learn from driving habits, and, like a real teenage driver, learn from its mistakes, and correct them. Musk stated,"When one car learns something, the whole fleet learns something. The network uploads “data to the central server, where it can be collected, do system analysis, and then feed that back into the cars. That’s the next level — and far beyond where other car companies are. Any car company that doesn’t do this will not be able to have an autonomous driving system,” Musk also said that updates will happen regularly and the “car should improve each week…you’ll probably notice difference after a week or a few weeks.” Sure enough, users flocking to this Reddit post have reported that they have witnessed this improvement. One man stated that his car used to take one turn near his house way too fast, and would have to hit the breaks mid-turn to slow down. However, over the next two weeks, he noticed that the car was changing, and eventually, it slowed down far before the 90 degree turn, and now takes it like any other safe human driver would. The Skynet of a system is working, and with over a million miles being logged a day, Tesla and its engineers have done a great job. One team cannot program a car how to perfectly drive, but, like a human, if they program an ability to learn from mistakes, well, practice makes perfect, and the car is practicing, and its learning! Yeah, I wouldn't imagine saying that growing up without thinking full Transformers.
-522 words
However, there is a caveat to the whole experience. While Telsa's engineers have spend years on this project, there are still certain risks, and since self-driving is still, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk pulled a smart liability claim by making the statement that,"We’re advising drivers to keep their hands on the wheel. The software — it’s very new,” he said. But he added: “In the long term, people won’t need hands on the wheel.” Backing this up, Musk announced that the car had self-learning capabilities programmed in, a smart artificial intelligence that, over the course of hundreds of millions of miles, would learn from driving habits, and, like a real teenage driver, learn from its mistakes, and correct them. Musk stated,"When one car learns something, the whole fleet learns something. The network uploads “data to the central server, where it can be collected, do system analysis, and then feed that back into the cars. That’s the next level — and far beyond where other car companies are. Any car company that doesn’t do this will not be able to have an autonomous driving system,” Musk also said that updates will happen regularly and the “car should improve each week…you’ll probably notice difference after a week or a few weeks.” Sure enough, users flocking to this Reddit post have reported that they have witnessed this improvement. One man stated that his car used to take one turn near his house way too fast, and would have to hit the breaks mid-turn to slow down. However, over the next two weeks, he noticed that the car was changing, and eventually, it slowed down far before the 90 degree turn, and now takes it like any other safe human driver would. The Skynet of a system is working, and with over a million miles being logged a day, Tesla and its engineers have done a great job. One team cannot program a car how to perfectly drive, but, like a human, if they program an ability to learn from mistakes, well, practice makes perfect, and the car is practicing, and its learning! Yeah, I wouldn't imagine saying that growing up without thinking full Transformers.
-522 words
Smartwatches: Useful or Gimmick?
Smartwatches have been in the buzz lately. Apple released its own Apple Watch almost a year ago, and other manufacturers have been rolling them off the shelves for quite a while, such as the circular Moto 360 X2, or the square LG G Watch dating all the way back to mid-2011. However, they seem quite controversial in both concept and usage. Smartwatches are either seen as overpriced, a gimmick, or a fad of the dying watch, due to phones with time being everywhere. However, since 2011 with the release of the LG G Watch, they have started working their way into peoples’ lives, and for the reason that they not only tell the time, but offer better map directions, sport tracking, and call/text/app notifications right on my wrist. While most activities will alert me with a notification, still requiring me to pull my phone out, many activities can be responded to with voice, or even better, I can just swipe them away, without pulling my phone out. So while this is just a digital accessory to my phone, I believe its most valuable function is to pull me away from my phone. So, I went out and bought myself a refurbished LG G Watch on the cheap, and decided to give it a go, to see if this tech hype was worth dishing out money for or not, and the following will be my experience with Android Wear.
The package finally came. If my milling around checking my Fedex tracking page every 5 minutes during school could be summed up by a song title, it would be "Centuries" by Fallout Boy. When did the package arrive, you might ask? Oh, just the morning AFTER I leave for the entire weekend for Chicago. So when I get home from vacation, I eagerly crack the box, slice the seals, and open up my gem to find a beautiful metal and glass watch staring me in the face. The watch has no buttons at all, as it strives for elegance, and there is no need for buttons, as the unit is driven and awaken by either a tilt of the wrist or a tap on its screen. I give it a quick tap, and sure enough....nothing. Time to hit the charging station. Included was a nice and strong magnetic charging station, and when any metal, including the watch body, gets close, BAM, it gets sucked in like planet being sucked into a black hole. It took about a full hour to fully charge the watch from its dead state, but I played with it a little while it rejuvenated. However, playing I didn't do much of, as four system updates, one after another, were waiting for me out of the box, so I spent my time clicking,"Update", "Yes.","Update", "Yes.","Update", "Yes.","Update", "Yes.", and by the time the watch was fully charged, I had an updated watch with the latest firmware, so despite the age of the watch (though the specs ARE up to date!), rest assured, the software experience would for sure be the same as any of the latest smartwatches.
After the charging cycle completed, I threw the watch on, and to my surprise, it felt suprisingly light and thin (it is thinner than the first generation Moto 360 by 1.5mm), especially when compared to my previous Nike+ GPS Watch for running. The band felt so premium, elastic, and comfortable for being rubber, but LG killed it here. KILLED. IT. I'm not going to wear something that kills my wrist or weighs me down like dumbells strapped to my wrist. I was even going to dish out $11 for a solid black metal band for it, since the watch offers interchangeable bands (that DON'T cost $50-$100. Yes, I'm looking at you Apple -_-). However, I found this band so comfortable, I wouldn't go metal just for the sake of keeping this good, flexible feeling.
As for learning the insides and outs of the watch, it didn't take too long to master it. A built-in tutorial taught the user the basic functions of dismissing cards, or notifications, how to answer calls (though while one can answer a call on the watch, its a one-way conversation until you pull your phone out of your pocket, as the watch has no speaker. However, its useful to swipe to answer and yell,"Hang on mum, I'm busy purging, gimme a sec!"), and how to use voice commands on the watch. Overall, simple tutorial, but getting the most out of Android Wear's true functionality and rhythm would take practice.
At first, I expected too much of Android Wear. I downloaded apps, such as a web browser, and a full keyboard to try to seceretly text in class on it without using voice commands. While possible, its a complete waste of time. A 1.65" screen was never for this, and thus, I COULD type a text, or browse web pages, but WHY?! I eventually uninstalled these gimmicks, though the programmers were genius' and programmed well, they have little use in real life. Continuing on, I learned receiving notifcations for texts were amazingly useful, as I usually forget to check my phone, but a vibrate on my wrist is very hard for me to ignore, and also, it allowed me to read texts in class and swipe them away without becoming distracted, replying, and getting pulled into useless conversation. However, notifications such as Snapchat were a little less useful. While great to know I have a Snapchat, I was dissappointed to find I could not view the snaps on my watch. While I know the watch is a small screened surface that could be easily photographed, I ask why? Just being able to see my snapchat conversations would nice sometimes, without pulling my phone completely out. Other apps that benefit from wear were AppyGeek, sending me a daily technology news article to digest in class to spice my blan day up a bit, and Google Fit, tracking my daily steps. I also have fun changing the watch face up on a now weekly basis, though at first it was daily. Its nice to have this feature, as its like owning a new watch every week, and it adds a high level of customization, with thousands of faces in the Play Store.
But after using this watch for two weeks, being excited, then disappointed, and then impressed, where do I stand now? Well, while most activities will alert me with a notification, still requiring me to pull my phone out, many activities can be responded to with voice, or even better, I can just swipe them away, without pulling my phone out. So while this is just a digital accessory to my phone, I believe its most valuable function is to pull me away from my phone. No longer will I have to check my phone for phantom vibrates that I wasn’t sure about, or I can save time by swiping away useless texts in class without pulling my phone out. Its a time saver, and I believe this one gives a point to using technology smarter instead of becoming addicted to it, even though the idea behind it sounds like the opposite. Using a crippled piece of technology to get basic tasks done pulls us away from the temping world that is our smartphone on the internet.
-1235 words
The package finally came. If my milling around checking my Fedex tracking page every 5 minutes during school could be summed up by a song title, it would be "Centuries" by Fallout Boy. When did the package arrive, you might ask? Oh, just the morning AFTER I leave for the entire weekend for Chicago. So when I get home from vacation, I eagerly crack the box, slice the seals, and open up my gem to find a beautiful metal and glass watch staring me in the face. The watch has no buttons at all, as it strives for elegance, and there is no need for buttons, as the unit is driven and awaken by either a tilt of the wrist or a tap on its screen. I give it a quick tap, and sure enough....nothing. Time to hit the charging station. Included was a nice and strong magnetic charging station, and when any metal, including the watch body, gets close, BAM, it gets sucked in like planet being sucked into a black hole. It took about a full hour to fully charge the watch from its dead state, but I played with it a little while it rejuvenated. However, playing I didn't do much of, as four system updates, one after another, were waiting for me out of the box, so I spent my time clicking,"Update", "Yes.","Update", "Yes.","Update", "Yes.","Update", "Yes.", and by the time the watch was fully charged, I had an updated watch with the latest firmware, so despite the age of the watch (though the specs ARE up to date!), rest assured, the software experience would for sure be the same as any of the latest smartwatches.
After the charging cycle completed, I threw the watch on, and to my surprise, it felt suprisingly light and thin (it is thinner than the first generation Moto 360 by 1.5mm), especially when compared to my previous Nike+ GPS Watch for running. The band felt so premium, elastic, and comfortable for being rubber, but LG killed it here. KILLED. IT. I'm not going to wear something that kills my wrist or weighs me down like dumbells strapped to my wrist. I was even going to dish out $11 for a solid black metal band for it, since the watch offers interchangeable bands (that DON'T cost $50-$100. Yes, I'm looking at you Apple -_-). However, I found this band so comfortable, I wouldn't go metal just for the sake of keeping this good, flexible feeling.
As for learning the insides and outs of the watch, it didn't take too long to master it. A built-in tutorial taught the user the basic functions of dismissing cards, or notifications, how to answer calls (though while one can answer a call on the watch, its a one-way conversation until you pull your phone out of your pocket, as the watch has no speaker. However, its useful to swipe to answer and yell,"Hang on mum, I'm busy purging, gimme a sec!"), and how to use voice commands on the watch. Overall, simple tutorial, but getting the most out of Android Wear's true functionality and rhythm would take practice.
At first, I expected too much of Android Wear. I downloaded apps, such as a web browser, and a full keyboard to try to seceretly text in class on it without using voice commands. While possible, its a complete waste of time. A 1.65" screen was never for this, and thus, I COULD type a text, or browse web pages, but WHY?! I eventually uninstalled these gimmicks, though the programmers were genius' and programmed well, they have little use in real life. Continuing on, I learned receiving notifcations for texts were amazingly useful, as I usually forget to check my phone, but a vibrate on my wrist is very hard for me to ignore, and also, it allowed me to read texts in class and swipe them away without becoming distracted, replying, and getting pulled into useless conversation. However, notifications such as Snapchat were a little less useful. While great to know I have a Snapchat, I was dissappointed to find I could not view the snaps on my watch. While I know the watch is a small screened surface that could be easily photographed, I ask why? Just being able to see my snapchat conversations would nice sometimes, without pulling my phone completely out. Other apps that benefit from wear were AppyGeek, sending me a daily technology news article to digest in class to spice my blan day up a bit, and Google Fit, tracking my daily steps. I also have fun changing the watch face up on a now weekly basis, though at first it was daily. Its nice to have this feature, as its like owning a new watch every week, and it adds a high level of customization, with thousands of faces in the Play Store.
But after using this watch for two weeks, being excited, then disappointed, and then impressed, where do I stand now? Well, while most activities will alert me with a notification, still requiring me to pull my phone out, many activities can be responded to with voice, or even better, I can just swipe them away, without pulling my phone out. So while this is just a digital accessory to my phone, I believe its most valuable function is to pull me away from my phone. No longer will I have to check my phone for phantom vibrates that I wasn’t sure about, or I can save time by swiping away useless texts in class without pulling my phone out. Its a time saver, and I believe this one gives a point to using technology smarter instead of becoming addicted to it, even though the idea behind it sounds like the opposite. Using a crippled piece of technology to get basic tasks done pulls us away from the temping world that is our smartphone on the internet.
-1235 words
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Offline Google Maps
Google usually an innovator, but its taken them many, many years to reach this day: fully offline maps. While not revolutionary to some, I think this is great. Personally, I have a cheapo carrier, and out in the middle of nowhere, I have little to no data service, so being able to offline my maps means that, if, for some reason, I lose my data and go off route, I will be uneffected, as my device at least knows what road I'm on, contrary to previously when it only downoads my destination region, my departure region, and the roads I plan on driving on. Competetors such as HERE Maps have had this feature for years, so while I think it was long-time overdue, I'm glad Google finally jumped on the bandwagon, though its only for Android (with iOS coming later in the year). Now, if only Apple Maps would add this functionality...(just kidding, they'll always be terrible!)
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Sunday, November 8, 2015
Cortana for iOS Beta: Just Stop Microsoft
During the year I owned a Windows Phone, I saw my phone transform through software updates. Not only did the new software finally allow wallpapers, folders, and Swype keyboard, but the most anticipated feature arrived on the 15th of April for the willing beta testers: Cortana.
Cortana was quite amazing. Her voice was so authentic, so real sounding, but unlike Siri, she actually felt like an assistant to get things done. One could simply say,"Hey Cortana!" and a dinging chime would sound, signalling she was listening for questions and commands. Dubbed the "first personal digital assistant", her main competitiveness in the voice recognition marketplace came in that she was more personal, able to tell jokes and be productive at the same time with a smooth synthesized voice.
Some of her best features included location reminders (say,"Remind me when I leave Walmart where I parked", or "Remind me next time I'm at school to return my library book."), telling cheesy jokes (no explanation needed), reading text messages aloud, sending texts, calling people, and most importantly and impressively, using APIs. APIs, or Application Program Interfaces, allows one app to interact with another. Using APIs, Cortana is able to interact with apps outside of Microsoft's home ecosystem, so that the user can tell Cortana,"Play episode 3 season 10 of South Park on Netflix," or,"Play my Watch Later on YouTube," or,"Play Radioactive on Spotify," and Cortana can open each individual app, search for the content from that app, and play it, all without the user having to click a button.
This is where Cortana and Google Now have always beaten out Siri at its game. iOS and Apple have always struggled to accept applications being able to extend their reaches outside their own virtual sandboxes, and thus, Siri has never had much interaction with the user and its apps outside of Apple's built in apps. For example, I could tell Siri to set a 5 am alarm, and it would create an alarm for 5 am using the BUILT IN clock app. However, if I tell it to play the latest PewDiePie video on YouTube, it will simply tell me its confused, or Google "Latest PewdiePie video on YouTube", creating frustration with the user. This is why Cortana earned its name as a personal assistant. However, recently Microsoft has created a beta app of Cortana for Android, but interestingly enough, has now also created a beta app for iOS as of this week.
The idea behind the release of the voice client on Android and iOS is to convince these users that Cortana is amazing by giving them a teasing taste, and convince them to switch mobile platforms to Windows Mobile, now currently Windows 10.
While the idea sounds great on paper, I consider it a waste of resources, time, and money. It's not convincing anyone to switch. As bold as that statement may sound, I believe it to be true. On both Android and iOS, the app is crippled beyond belief from what I had on my old Windows Phone. As I explained earlier, Cortana is so useful on Windows Mobile due to the incorporation of APIs on the OS, allowing it to interact with apps such as Spotify or Netflix directly. However, once Cortana reached 3rd party platforms, it no longer retains control over APIs and other applications. Without such integration, Cortana can only place calls, tell jokes, and Bing things for the most part. So while I applaud Microsoft’s efforts at expansion and unifying platforms, I think they should save their time, as it does nothing but misrepresent how useful Cortana is.
Cortana was quite amazing. Her voice was so authentic, so real sounding, but unlike Siri, she actually felt like an assistant to get things done. One could simply say,"Hey Cortana!" and a dinging chime would sound, signalling she was listening for questions and commands. Dubbed the "first personal digital assistant", her main competitiveness in the voice recognition marketplace came in that she was more personal, able to tell jokes and be productive at the same time with a smooth synthesized voice.
Some of her best features included location reminders (say,"Remind me when I leave Walmart where I parked", or "Remind me next time I'm at school to return my library book."), telling cheesy jokes (no explanation needed), reading text messages aloud, sending texts, calling people, and most importantly and impressively, using APIs. APIs, or Application Program Interfaces, allows one app to interact with another. Using APIs, Cortana is able to interact with apps outside of Microsoft's home ecosystem, so that the user can tell Cortana,"Play episode 3 season 10 of South Park on Netflix," or,"Play my Watch Later on YouTube," or,"Play Radioactive on Spotify," and Cortana can open each individual app, search for the content from that app, and play it, all without the user having to click a button.
This is where Cortana and Google Now have always beaten out Siri at its game. iOS and Apple have always struggled to accept applications being able to extend their reaches outside their own virtual sandboxes, and thus, Siri has never had much interaction with the user and its apps outside of Apple's built in apps. For example, I could tell Siri to set a 5 am alarm, and it would create an alarm for 5 am using the BUILT IN clock app. However, if I tell it to play the latest PewDiePie video on YouTube, it will simply tell me its confused, or Google "Latest PewdiePie video on YouTube", creating frustration with the user. This is why Cortana earned its name as a personal assistant. However, recently Microsoft has created a beta app of Cortana for Android, but interestingly enough, has now also created a beta app for iOS as of this week.
The idea behind the release of the voice client on Android and iOS is to convince these users that Cortana is amazing by giving them a teasing taste, and convince them to switch mobile platforms to Windows Mobile, now currently Windows 10.
While the idea sounds great on paper, I consider it a waste of resources, time, and money. It's not convincing anyone to switch. As bold as that statement may sound, I believe it to be true. On both Android and iOS, the app is crippled beyond belief from what I had on my old Windows Phone. As I explained earlier, Cortana is so useful on Windows Mobile due to the incorporation of APIs on the OS, allowing it to interact with apps such as Spotify or Netflix directly. However, once Cortana reached 3rd party platforms, it no longer retains control over APIs and other applications. Without such integration, Cortana can only place calls, tell jokes, and Bing things for the most part. So while I applaud Microsoft’s efforts at expansion and unifying platforms, I think they should save their time, as it does nothing but misrepresent how useful Cortana is.
-606 words
The Most Powerful Viruses
Viruses. They affect not only humans, but also computers in the forms of worms, trojans, and malware. They come from visiting shady websites, downloading files, or from a compromise in the network. There have been millions of these viruses written, however, this is the list of the top three viruses to ever hit the mainstream, starting least powerful to most powerful and effective as number
3. MyDoom
Based on the name, it is already implies that this virus brings doom to its victims when this virus unleashed itself in February of 2004. According to British security firm MessageLabs, 1 in 12 emails handed by the firm was infected with the MyDoom worm. It was the fastest spreading worm, with about 100,000 instances of the worm being intercepted by the security firm, and a quarter million dollar reward for information to arrest and convict the coder was made by MessageLabs. Ironically enough, MyDoom shutdown MessageLab’s servers for several days through a massive DDOS attacks, and even sent Google into a dead crawl for a whole day on July 24, 2004! The author of MyDoom was never ascertained; however, several security firms believe it originated from a programmer based in Russia.
2. Sasser
In the Spring of 2004 a worm by the name of Sasser began its havoc. Once on an infected computer, it would spread via a Windows XP or 2000 bug that would allow it to jump on any computer also on the same internet connection. Once infected, the worm would make shutting down the PC impossible without unplugging it from the wall, and it would cause many crashes of LSASS.exe, hence the name SASSer, that would make usability almost impossible. A man by the name of Jaschan was eventually caught and found guilty after he had released it on his 18th birthday as a “gift to the world”.
1. Storm Trojan
In the beginning of 2007, the Storm Trojan infected thousands of computers. Unsuspecting users would open emails with subject lines such as:
-230 dead as storm batters Europe
or
-FBI vs Facebook
After opening the attachment, the trojan began implanting a service called wincom32 and passing data to other infected computers. All the infected computers become botnets, networks of infected computers, and each machine added to the chaos, like a virus spreading cell to cell in a human body, amplifying the reach and strength.
In September 2007, the botnet grew from thousands to millions of computers. Peter Gutmann estimated somewhere between 1 and 10 million computers were under the rule of the trojan.
I guess the morale of the story is, even if you trust the sender, you shouldn't be so quick to open an attachment, as malware can send itself through contact lists of its infectees. Keeping your antivirus software updated, scheduling regular scans and downloading attachments with a scrupulous, critical eye will keep most malware threats at bay.
-486 words
3. MyDoom
Based on the name, it is already implies that this virus brings doom to its victims when this virus unleashed itself in February of 2004. According to British security firm MessageLabs, 1 in 12 emails handed by the firm was infected with the MyDoom worm. It was the fastest spreading worm, with about 100,000 instances of the worm being intercepted by the security firm, and a quarter million dollar reward for information to arrest and convict the coder was made by MessageLabs. Ironically enough, MyDoom shutdown MessageLab’s servers for several days through a massive DDOS attacks, and even sent Google into a dead crawl for a whole day on July 24, 2004! The author of MyDoom was never ascertained; however, several security firms believe it originated from a programmer based in Russia.
2. Sasser
In the Spring of 2004 a worm by the name of Sasser began its havoc. Once on an infected computer, it would spread via a Windows XP or 2000 bug that would allow it to jump on any computer also on the same internet connection. Once infected, the worm would make shutting down the PC impossible without unplugging it from the wall, and it would cause many crashes of LSASS.exe, hence the name SASSer, that would make usability almost impossible. A man by the name of Jaschan was eventually caught and found guilty after he had released it on his 18th birthday as a “gift to the world”.
1. Storm Trojan
In the beginning of 2007, the Storm Trojan infected thousands of computers. Unsuspecting users would open emails with subject lines such as:
-230 dead as storm batters Europe
or
-FBI vs Facebook
After opening the attachment, the trojan began implanting a service called wincom32 and passing data to other infected computers. All the infected computers become botnets, networks of infected computers, and each machine added to the chaos, like a virus spreading cell to cell in a human body, amplifying the reach and strength.
In September 2007, the botnet grew from thousands to millions of computers. Peter Gutmann estimated somewhere between 1 and 10 million computers were under the rule of the trojan.
I guess the morale of the story is, even if you trust the sender, you shouldn't be so quick to open an attachment, as malware can send itself through contact lists of its infectees. Keeping your antivirus software updated, scheduling regular scans and downloading attachments with a scrupulous, critical eye will keep most malware threats at bay.
-486 words
Technology: Brain rotter or amplifier?
What is the point of technology? Why do we treat it like it like it's amazing, but sometimes undervalue its existence on a daily basis. Is it a godsend, or a curse? Does it make us smarter and more analytical, or dumb as rocks, reliant on our tech and the internet like a life support system?
These are the questions that have arisen over the past decades as technology has slowly engulfed our entire lives. It first started with the calculators that engulfed entire rooms. Costing millions upon millions of dollars, and taking up entire rooms, they were slower than potatoes at calculating answers. Sure, it came in handy when crunching huge numbers, but otherwise, you could beat this machine out multiplying 324*293 anyday! It was at this point that some saw technology take two divergent paths: either a wasteland of circuitry, or a vast land of potential.
Now, prior to this point in time, the television had came along to replace the radio, and was also met with criticism: it was deemed by some to be a melting pot for the brain, offering little more than a time waster to the human life, but others realized the leisureful activies the television could bring. However, with TV/Netflix times peaking to an average of hours per week for teenagers, it seems that some of the grumpy grandpas of the past may have been right on that one….But it keeps coming back to whether or not a technology is making us smarter or burning our brains out like Rambough burning his brains out in Paris over a thousand poems. I guess the internet, smartphones, and smartwatches are the latest arrivals to the game, so we should give them their shots to duke it out in the ring to figure this one out. Lets start with the internet.
The internet allows us to have access to a wealth of information, We can Google when someone died, what someone did, who to vote for, when the next solar eclipse is, and read blog articles on the web to learn about the positives and negatives of technology. Seems legit, so lets give one point to Gryffindor…..but wait. Hold on there jockey, a little fast on the starter gun. While we can look up and find information, it also opens a world to billions and billions of hours of useless YouTube videos completely non educational, social media sites such as reddit to just layer comment upon comment on a photo of Justin Bieber being made fun of, an ever-abundance of nudity, online bullying, and enough selfies to wrap a canvas of them around the earth several hundred times. However, despite all of this, I would say it has united the world in a whole new way, and the idea of having information at our fingertips, while making us less likely to memorize who was the first president of the United States, gives us more power than ever at our fingertips.
Smartphones tie into this realm of forever being connected. While they provide the fastest portal to information via the internet, they also provide the fatest portal to distractions: Snapchat selfies, Twitter surfing, and...well, never mind, no one uses Facebook but old people. Smartphones, while being “smart”, I think they have pushed social media over its edge with looping 7 second videos of kittens, and therefore, I think smartphones, while a tool for me every day, have been devices that have made us just a tad more….non smart. as if the “smart” in smartphone has taken the word from us. It's a fair fight, with evidence on both sides, but it ultimately takes the distraction award for me.
Finally, the brand new smartwatches step into the ring. Smartwatches are different, because they are either seen as overpriced, a gimmick, or a fad of the dying watch, due to phones with time being everywhere. However, since 2011, they have started working their way into peoples’ lives, and for the reason that they not only tell the time, but offer better map directions, sport tracking, and call/text/app notifications right on my wrist. While most activities will alert me with a notification, still requiring me to pull my phone out, many activities can be responded to with voice, or even better, I can just swipe them away, without pulling my phone out. So while this is just a digital accessory to my phone, I believe its most valuable function is to pull me away from my phone. No longer will I have to check my phone for phantom vibrates that I wasn’t sure about, or I can save time by swiping away useless texts in class without pulling my phone out. Its a time saver, and I believe this one gives a point to using technology smarter instead of becoming addicted to it, even though the idea behind it sounds like the opposite. Using a crippled piece of technology to get basic tasks done pulls us away from the temping world that is our smartphone on the internet.
So I guess the conclusion is, it kinda depends. Technology can make us smarter and grow with information, but it can also pull us into its depths that cause distraction and disconnection. Its up to its users to steer the car towards the direction they wish to take.
-894 words
These are the questions that have arisen over the past decades as technology has slowly engulfed our entire lives. It first started with the calculators that engulfed entire rooms. Costing millions upon millions of dollars, and taking up entire rooms, they were slower than potatoes at calculating answers. Sure, it came in handy when crunching huge numbers, but otherwise, you could beat this machine out multiplying 324*293 anyday! It was at this point that some saw technology take two divergent paths: either a wasteland of circuitry, or a vast land of potential.
Now, prior to this point in time, the television had came along to replace the radio, and was also met with criticism: it was deemed by some to be a melting pot for the brain, offering little more than a time waster to the human life, but others realized the leisureful activies the television could bring. However, with TV/Netflix times peaking to an average of hours per week for teenagers, it seems that some of the grumpy grandpas of the past may have been right on that one….But it keeps coming back to whether or not a technology is making us smarter or burning our brains out like Rambough burning his brains out in Paris over a thousand poems. I guess the internet, smartphones, and smartwatches are the latest arrivals to the game, so we should give them their shots to duke it out in the ring to figure this one out. Lets start with the internet.
The internet allows us to have access to a wealth of information, We can Google when someone died, what someone did, who to vote for, when the next solar eclipse is, and read blog articles on the web to learn about the positives and negatives of technology. Seems legit, so lets give one point to Gryffindor…..but wait. Hold on there jockey, a little fast on the starter gun. While we can look up and find information, it also opens a world to billions and billions of hours of useless YouTube videos completely non educational, social media sites such as reddit to just layer comment upon comment on a photo of Justin Bieber being made fun of, an ever-abundance of nudity, online bullying, and enough selfies to wrap a canvas of them around the earth several hundred times. However, despite all of this, I would say it has united the world in a whole new way, and the idea of having information at our fingertips, while making us less likely to memorize who was the first president of the United States, gives us more power than ever at our fingertips.
Smartphones tie into this realm of forever being connected. While they provide the fastest portal to information via the internet, they also provide the fatest portal to distractions: Snapchat selfies, Twitter surfing, and...well, never mind, no one uses Facebook but old people. Smartphones, while being “smart”, I think they have pushed social media over its edge with looping 7 second videos of kittens, and therefore, I think smartphones, while a tool for me every day, have been devices that have made us just a tad more….non smart. as if the “smart” in smartphone has taken the word from us. It's a fair fight, with evidence on both sides, but it ultimately takes the distraction award for me.
Finally, the brand new smartwatches step into the ring. Smartwatches are different, because they are either seen as overpriced, a gimmick, or a fad of the dying watch, due to phones with time being everywhere. However, since 2011, they have started working their way into peoples’ lives, and for the reason that they not only tell the time, but offer better map directions, sport tracking, and call/text/app notifications right on my wrist. While most activities will alert me with a notification, still requiring me to pull my phone out, many activities can be responded to with voice, or even better, I can just swipe them away, without pulling my phone out. So while this is just a digital accessory to my phone, I believe its most valuable function is to pull me away from my phone. No longer will I have to check my phone for phantom vibrates that I wasn’t sure about, or I can save time by swiping away useless texts in class without pulling my phone out. Its a time saver, and I believe this one gives a point to using technology smarter instead of becoming addicted to it, even though the idea behind it sounds like the opposite. Using a crippled piece of technology to get basic tasks done pulls us away from the temping world that is our smartphone on the internet.
So I guess the conclusion is, it kinda depends. Technology can make us smarter and grow with information, but it can also pull us into its depths that cause distraction and disconnection. Its up to its users to steer the car towards the direction they wish to take.
-894 words
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Hanging Out Virtual Style: Who's Down?
What do you do when you are bored and want to hang out with friends? Spam everyone in your contacts with texts, or add a "bored hmu" Snapchat to your story? What if you could just flick a virtual switch on your smartphone to the on position, and your friends could instantly see you were free to hang out? Well, that's what Google has created with its new app that is currently in Beta, by the name of Who's Down.
Who's Down simply does as the name implies: it asks your friends list who's down for an activity or hanging out.
While I see this as a really neat way of finding out who is free quickly, I do see it as troublesome: for example, you might not want to hang out with someone at an exact moment, but if you ask " Who's down for a movie tonight?" and that one person messages you, you have to awkwardly ignore them, even though they know that you are free and looking for someone to hang out with. There are other potential issues too, such as our world becoming more and more socially dependent on technology to guide our social lives and define who we are, but I still think this is a very cool idea, but it is unfortunately only available via invite from Google or a friend that has the app currently, which is a very limited few. However, assuming this app is availble to the mainstream sometime in the near future, who's down to try it?
-257 words
Who's Down simply does as the name implies: it asks your friends list who's down for an activity or hanging out.
While I see this as a really neat way of finding out who is free quickly, I do see it as troublesome: for example, you might not want to hang out with someone at an exact moment, but if you ask " Who's down for a movie tonight?" and that one person messages you, you have to awkwardly ignore them, even though they know that you are free and looking for someone to hang out with. There are other potential issues too, such as our world becoming more and more socially dependent on technology to guide our social lives and define who we are, but I still think this is a very cool idea, but it is unfortunately only available via invite from Google or a friend that has the app currently, which is a very limited few. However, assuming this app is availble to the mainstream sometime in the near future, who's down to try it?
-257 words
Add Wireless Charging to ANY Phone! (even iPHONES!)
Does the idea of wirelessly charging your phone sound both like a cool feature and a convience? It sure does to me!
However, unless you are one of the few to own a smartphone, such as the new Lumias or Galaxy S6, wireless charging is most likely NOT included with your phone :/ But turn that frown upside down with some great tech on Amazon! :D
Wireless charging consists of two components: a wireless receiver, and the wireless charging base. The charging base outputs the power wirelessly, similar to a router outputting WiFi for a house, and the receiver receives the power and charges the battery. While anyone can buy a wireless charging base, it currently won't work on many phones due to most phones lacking the receiver. However, we can add one!
By purchasing THIS wireless receiver (there are others available for iPhone's lightning, or other micro-USB orientations (A or B)), plugging it into your phone, and placing it either inside the back cover of your phone, OR placing it on the rear of the phone with a thin case on the outside, wireless charging is now possible (pictured below is an iPhone 6 with a wireless receiver inserted between a phone and a case).
By purchasing any assortment of wireless charging stations ranging between $15-$30, and picking up a $10 wireless receiver, for merely $25, you can charge your device with cool style and convenience, and impress all your friends!
-241 words
R.I.P Chrome OS
There are many different laptops available on the market: some of them have touch screens, some of them have pressure-sensitive styluses as options, some have detachable keyboards, some have 360 degree hinges, some have dedicated graphics cards, some are powerful and heavy, some are lowpowered and thin, some run Windows, some run Mac OS X. There are a wide variety, but there is a third category often untouched and unheard of, and that is, the Chromebook.
Chromebooks were a concept started by Google in 2011, four years ago. The idea behind it was that sometimes people just need low powered computers that could do word processing and web browsing, not cost a lot of money, and also be very portable with great battery life. Microsoft had seen this financial opportunity in 2007, and helped OEMs release netbooks. Netbooks, being not hefty enough to be called NOTEbooks, were, as the name implies, designed to browse the NET, or internet long hand. The concept was brilliant, but the execution was a disaster. Millions of netbooks sold to people looking for a cheap basic computer, but the problem was that the battery was subpar, but even worse, the performance of these machines were as fast as a snail trying to cross a large meadow. They flopped hard, with plenty of disatisfied customers (myself being one of them), and they disappeared within two years as a reminder that matching cheap hardware with a full-blown Windows OS was a negative experience for all.
Fast forward 4 years, and Google decided to step back into the gauntlet. From their research and observations, the hardware was fine for browsing the web and doing basic tasks, but the problem was coming from Windows taking up too many precious resources on these weakling machines. Therefore, to fix that problem, Google said,"To hell with Windows!" and created Chrome OS. Chrome OS was built specifically with low system requirements in mind (though it runs excellently on higher powered hardware, as seen on the Chromebook Pixel II). Chrome OS, as stated in the name, is completely based off of the Chrome internet browser, but with small tweaks here and there. There is a desktop, but nothing on it. There is a "Start Menu", so to speak, and applets can be found here. I call them applets because they are not usually full-blown apps as found on a Windows machine. Apps such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides all are applets that run inside of Chrome tabs, and applets such as Netflix just open Netflix.com in the browser. Applets do ususally allow for some offline capabilities, however, such as Docs editing, but this introduces the two caveots of Chrome OS: the need to typically be online, and the fact that it does not feature many apps.
Chromebooks are primarily web-based computers, so without the internet, a large part of functionality is lost. They come with little storage space typically, so most documents are stored on the cloud with Google Drive, or the user has to find a way to store them on another computer. This is where owning a Windows PC for storage and high power-hungy apps and games, and owning a Chromebook for on the go at school or whatnot, can be very useful. I would not be able to say I could live with only a Chromebook without owning a desktop for my gaming. However, my Chromebook is invaluable to me as Chrome OS allows me to get almost 11 hours of usage on one single charge, it turns on in 7 seconds, resumes from sleep instantly, can stay in sleep for weeks without usage and is still ready to go, and is just the ultimate slim fit inside of my packed school backpack. Did I mention it still only cost $199? Damn Google, you done made good for me.
Grammatically incorrect sentences aside, Chrome OS may only survive for another 2 years, as Google is planning on ousting it in 2017. Why would Google do such a thing to this amazing OS?! Are they crazy?! They currently are dominating a quite large chunk of the low-end laptop market, and are one of Amazons most shipped laptops, but Google's going to choose to pull out now? Well, its not as bad as it might seem on paper.
Google has recognized the negative criticism on the amount of apps on the Chromebook, as Chrome OS cannot run traditional Windows programs, so Google has decided to take the best of what it currently has in its two children, Chrome OS and Android, and merge them into a new product. The firm plans to create a new child that has the millions of apps from Android's loaded Google Play Store, and the desktop ecosystem of Chrome OS, and mix the two of them together to create......CHRANDROID OS!
Naming jokes aside, no one knows what this will be named, or what the final product will look like, but people some people are worried their current Chromebooks will be rendered update-less and left in the past like Netbooks were, while others are enthusiastic that Google MAY choose to update current Chromebooks running Chrome OS to the new operating system. I fall in the middle of that line: I believe it would be awesome if I recieved the update, but at the same time, my Chromebook will be 5 years old at that point, and considering it was only $199 at the time of purchase, I am not concerned with it not receiving an update, it will have served me quite well by the end of 5 years time. Whether current customers will get continued support or not, no one knows, but I think the future is bright for Google against its Apple and Microsoft competetors: who said there can't be three big fighters in the boxing ring?
Naming jokes aside, no one knows what this will be named, or what the final product will look like, but people some people are worried their current Chromebooks will be rendered update-less and left in the past like Netbooks were, while others are enthusiastic that Google MAY choose to update current Chromebooks running Chrome OS to the new operating system. I fall in the middle of that line: I believe it would be awesome if I recieved the update, but at the same time, my Chromebook will be 5 years old at that point, and considering it was only $199 at the time of purchase, I am not concerned with it not receiving an update, it will have served me quite well by the end of 5 years time. Whether current customers will get continued support or not, no one knows, but I think the future is bright for Google against its Apple and Microsoft competetors: who said there can't be three big fighters in the boxing ring?
-974 words
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