Reflection on the week 1/4/2009-1/10/2009

1. OLED

2. 2009 a nesting year?

3. Microsoft charging monthly fees?

4. Wikipedia met 6 million dollar goal

5. Picasa knows where you are

6. Twitter account hacked

7. TV guide bought

8. LG makes new washer and dryer appliance

9. Change to cell phone use in England

10. Obama and energy

11. Top sites traveled to in 2008

12. Facebook reaches record number of users

13. CES in nut shell

14. Gizmos and Gadgets from CES 2009

15. Personal Thoughts

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1. OLED

OLED or organic light emitting diodes are not a new technology for human kind, but can be considered new for the common consumer. They are being researched by many electronics companies such as Samsaung and Sony. They were shown off in applications such as TV screens at CES in 2007, 2008, and now in 2009. These diodes could replace the current LCD TVs. They are being made so they can be printed on thin sheets and still give off light. One great application of these devices could be printing the diodes on to paper and have a screen which can bend and possbily fold up.

2. 2009 a nesting year?

2009 is being considered a nesting year for some. At least the first half of 2009. People will most likely try and save their money by not traveling great distances and some may even stick to their own city for traveling. Consumers will most likely be purchasing entertainment for the home such as movies and games.

3. Microsoft charging monthly fees?

Numerous rumors have been heard about Microsoft wanting to charge monthly fees for their software opposed to the previous business model of a one time payment. Supposedly this has not been the first time Microsoft has looked into charging a subscription for the products it offers. I feel that when Microsoft takes the model of being a service and charging the subscription fees most consumers will find an alternative and some businesses may soon follow.

4. Wikipedia met 6 million dollar goal

Wikipedia met their 6 million dollar goal earlier this week. Wikipedia is a great free service which needs this money to function. When comparing Encyclopedia Britannica to Wikipedia experts have found the same amount of errors and accuracies within each.

5. Picasa knows where you are

Google has recently acquired Panoramio, a photo sharing site that locates where a device has captured a picture. Capturing devices that have GPS techonolgy work with Panoramio to pin point on Google maps where that device is after it has captured a photo. The photo is uploaded to the website for people to view and with an added bonus, can disclose where that picture was taken.

6. Twitter account hacked

Twitter was hacked earlier this week where someone posted “tweets” in accounts they did not own. The accounts of Brittany Spears and Barack Obama were among the accounts hacked into.

7. TV guide bought

TV guide was bought by Lionsgate. Lionsgate is known for their film studio. They bought TV guide for 255 million dollars. With this investment speculation can be made that Lionsgate is wishing to get into the television community. It is starting out small with TV guide with a chance to start getting into making mini-series and other media catered to the television audiences.

8. LG makes new washer and dryer appliance

LG created an appliance which combines both the washer and dryer into one machine. The machine will recycle the water from the wash process and then steam drys the clothes. An advantage to this system is the steam kills more allergns in clothes than normal air dryers do. Also the dryer is energy efficient and in the long run is cheaper than running a washer and dryer as two separate machines.

9. Change to cell phone use in England

In the near future if not right now cell phones will not be allowed in hospitals in England. The government is putting a ban on all cell phone usage within the building of hospitals.

10. Obama and energy

Two weeks are left before Obama takes office at the White House and he is already taking the reins from Bush. Obama is meeting with officials about the economy and is already planning what will help this nation. This last week Obama has talked about re-evaluating all government buildings for energy efficiency. If a building fails the energy effiency tests than that building is to be brought up to date immediately. Doing this will save tax payers money and also create new jobs for those who help make a building energy efficient.

11. Top sites traveled to in 2008

A list of the top sites visited in 2008 has been made:

1. Google.com
2. Yahoo.com
3. WindowsLive.com
4. Microsoft.com
5. aol.com
6. youtube.com
7. fox.com
8. ebay.com
9. wikipedia.com
10. apple.com

12. Facebook reaches record number of users

Facebook this past week has reached 150 million users. Countries that are becoming very interested in Facebook and really adding to the user community are Russia, Japan, and Nigeria. Some might be really excited to see Facebook growing at such a rate, but I have a different opnion. I entered college in the Fall of 2005 and learned about Facebook. At that time only those with a college email address could join and that is what inspired me to join the community. I saw a social community that linked college students together and was not open to everyone like Myspace, which was also going on at the same time. Now anyone can join Facebook, a person needs any email address. Even though Facebook is considered more secure than Myspace I feel it has lost most of it’s luster and I reminise on the days of when it was open only to college students.

13. CES in nut shell

CES of 2009 is nothing to brag about. Most of the innovation was still there, but the attendence was extremely low. Most years in the past people were bumping elbows with other people when walking on the show floor and no one can forget the extremely long lines for a taxi. This year one person was seen lying on the floor of CES without a fear of being stepped on. Also the famous taxi lines from the past were not to be seen.

14. Gizmos and Gadgets from CES 2009

• Propane battery – Toshiba and Samsaung are developing a battery which runs on propane. This battery will need a 10 minute charge to power a device for up to 4 hours. Some are considering this new technology to be the first fuel cells used in consumer electrionics.
• Poloroid Pogo – The Pogo is a camera with a built in printer. It prints 2 X 3 inch pictures. The user can adjust red eye and add a border before printing. The camera uses ZINK printing which is an all-in-one paper that requires no ink. 10 pieces of paper can  be stored in the camera and the camera takes about 50 seconds to take a picture. With this product it can be seen that Poloroid is still trying to maintain it’s business moto by making a device which prints a picture after capture. I’m not sure if this will be an extremely great product in the next year, but you can’t go wrong with paper that requires no ink and the image will not smear.
• Universal Studios – Universal had a booth at CES this year and was showing off numerous items and ideas. One piece of technology that was demonstrated was the TAMI index. This measuring index analyzed the viewing of videos and media such as the 2008 Summer Olympics. What was interesting about the TAMI index is that in not only measured the audience from the television, but also calculated numbers of viewers watching on mobile devices, online, and video-on-demand. Using the TAMI index can really give an accurate depiciton of how many people are watching a particular piece of media.
• Force Trainer – For those young Jedis out there, here’s the toy for you. For 90-100 dollars a new toy will be on store shelves in the year of 2009. The toy gives the feel as if you were Yoda or Luke Skywalker using the force. This toy uses EEG techonology and an air blower that raises a ball up and down. The blower is controlled by the users brain waves which then makes the ball raise or lower without any physical contact to the machine.

15. Personal Thoughts

In my personal thoughts for this week I’ll first get it out of the way by saying I’m not pleased with Windows and their attempt at releasing Windows 7 to the public. I shake my head in disapproval, but still hope for the hour which I can see what Windows 7 has in store. From what I hear Windows 7 is an improved Vista that operates faster and comes with many drivers for those devices and applications that have compatibility issues. On the other note I am eager to start my next semester of college and looking forward to the end of snow and cold.

Identity Theft – Prepare Yourself

Identity theft is a scary situation to imagine, comprehend, or even be a victim of. I once heard that identity theft will happen to everyone at least once in their life and all we can do is prepare ourselves for the day when we find out someone is pretending to be us to steal our money, or gain other benefits. Listed below are some tips on how to prevent identity theft:

• When ordering new checks pick them up at the bank rather than having them mailed to your house, and don’t have your bank print your driver’s license number on checks
• Shred all documents related to personal and financial information
• Be cautious on the phone and when browsing websites (look for encryption on sites asking for billing information and don’t give personal information over the phone)
• Protect your computer from hackers
• Don’t carry your social security card in your wallet or purse
• Deposit outgoing mail at the post office or in post office owned collection boxes rather than an unsecured mailbox
• Create clever and secure passwords for financial and personal websites – keep these passwords to yourself
• Pay attention to your billing statements

Most of us are prepared for the day when we get in a car accident. We know who we will call and how to handle the situation. We need to have this same set of mind when our identity is stolen. Know who you’re going to call and what you are going to do right when you find out someone is pretending to be you. Listed below are a few steps one should take after finding out their identity is stolen:

• Contact the credit bureaus’ fraud department
  Credit Bureau Information

• Close all accounts that have been tampered with
• File a report with the local police
• Keep good records during the process of re-establishing your identity
• Change your PINs
• Contact the Social Security Administration
• Contact your State Motor Vehicle Department

The best way to deal with identity theft is to prevent it from happening in the first place, but in this day in age we must accept the fact that it will probably happen to us at some point in our lives. The main way to tackle identity theft is to prepare ourselves for when it occurs so we can re-establish our identity easily and quickly.

To partcipate in the Credit / Identity blogging scholarship visit this site: http://students.spendonlife.com/blogging-scholarship

Reflection on the week 11/16/2008-11/22/2008

1. Peer-to-Peer
2. Windows 7
3. Recession
4. Edison (software)
5. Microsoft
6. Black Monday ( 11/24/2008 )
7. Black Friday
8. Samsung- solid state drives
9. Monty Python
10. Somalia – pirated oil tanker
11. Dubai
12. Personal Thoughts

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1. Peer-to-Peer
   p2p is responsible for ripping off the music industry by 70 billion dollars. This coincidentally is also the amount by which the American auto industry is hoping to get in the bailout from the US government.
2. Windows 7
   The Beta for Windows 7 is rumored to be available sometime next year. A few individuals who attended a developers conference a few weeks ago were fortunate enough to get their hands on the beta for Windows 7.
3. Recession
   Two other nations entered a recession this past week. Germany entered a recession early in the week with Japan entering a recession on Tuesday.
4. Edison (software)
   Edison is a software which works with a PC to become more environmentally friendly. It will idle the computer when not in use. You are able to set a schedule for when to idle the computer and by using this software your energy bill should be cheaper. I have yet to test this software out, but I am eager to see what this program has to offer.
5. Microsoft
   It seems every day Microsoft is in the news. Well last week it was suggested that Microsoft might be making their own anti-virus software. Microsoft wants to make their own anti-virus software but also give it to the public for free. This could potentially lead to a lawsuit from Symantec or McAfee.
6. Black Monday ( 11/24/2008 )
   Calling the upcoming “Black Monday” is misleading since most people think of an economic disturbance. However this Monday is a scheduled date for when a lot of malware is to be spilled into networks. First thing you do on Monday when you get to work is to check to make sure all anti-virus and protection software is up to date before checking emails. Do not click on suspicious emails and be wary of untrusted websites.
7. Black Friday
   Black Friday is referred to the day after Thanksgiving where many Americans hit the shopping malls and stores to take advantage of great deals and sales. Black Friday is called “black” Friday because this is when many companies will go from being in the “red” and rise into the “black”, profit speaking. This year however most companies will not experience a Black Friday since most will still remain profitless for the year. Also regarding Black Friday a few companies have already started their seasonal sales, trying to get a week or two more into their seasonal sale time. Most online merchants have put up deals and bargains early. As for myself I have not started any of my Christmas shopping, which I am not too happy about.
8. Samsung- solid state drives
   Samsung has announced it is making a solid state drive which is 256 GB in capcity. It has been proven that solid state drives are faster in performance, but can be a burden when it comes to updating programs or installing drivers. I believe solid state hard drives are a good technology advancement. I like the idea of moving away from moving parts in computer hardware to a hard drive that requires no moving parts. Not only is the solid state drive faster in performance, but I believe the life of a solid state hard drive is incredibly greater than a moving parts hard drive which is now in most computers.
9. Monty Python
   The best selling material from Monty Python is the Life of Brian, however I only have seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was announced this past week that Monty Python will be going on YouTube. What will be featured on YouTube related to Monty Python? New and old material will be released on YouTube regarding Monty Python.
10. Somalia – Oil tanker piracy
    This past week pirates have been active in the seas around Somalia. They hijacked at least two oil tankers requesting large amounts of money be paid for the release of the ships. Now cargo ships have been forced around the Southern tip of Africa in order to get to the Atlantic ocean. The insurance costs for shipping agencies has increased due to these events.
11. Dubai
    An exclusive party was held in Dubai in the later part of last week. The estimate on the total cost for the party is around 20 million dollars. 2000 people attended including Michael Jordon who said the even was great. There was a huge fireworks display which was said to be seen from space. There was a champagne reception and a huge feast, Atlantic Lobster being one of the main dishes. Lindsey Lohan attended the event to DJ the rest of the party after a popular Australian singer opened the event.
12. Personal Thoughts
    I am getting excited for Thanksgiving. I will be spending time with family in the Milwaukee area of Wisconsin. The academic semester is racing to a finsih, with only three and half weeks left. Rifle season started for deer hunting in the State of Wisconsin and many have headed to the Northern woods to test their ability against the four legged creatures with white tails. Three of my roommates are participating in the opening weekend of rifle season. Seeing as though I will be out of town next weekend I am not sure if I will be able to post a weekend reflection or not.

Sources: Google News and KenRadio

Comments on KenRadio broadcast 11/12/2008

Link to 11/12/2008 broadcast

For those inventors out there: A site to check for patent information inventions.org

I would make a bet that a majority of people use USB technology every day, being through data transfer or an input device that is connected to a USB port. The lasted USB technology to be released to the public and which is used by the majority of people is USB 2.1. Earlier in the year rumors were talking about USB 3.0. USB 3.0 progressing and hopefully it is making it’s final stages before being released to computer companies. Now when we are comparing data transfer of 25 GB:

• USB 1.0 could transfer 25 GB in 9.3 hours
• USB 2.0 could transfer 25 GB in 13.9 minutes
• USB 3.0 will transfer 25 GB in 70 seconds

USB 3.0 will also have the capability to send a lot more power through it’s ports, potentially powering a whole laptop. This would be extremely useful for those who use laptops on planes. If the planes provided USB 3.0 ports travelers would be able to plug into the aircraft ports and power their lab tops through a USB port instead of an AC adapter.

A city in Turkey is thinking of suing the producer of the Batman movies since the city’s name is Batman. The population of the city has been nagging the mayor for some time on what to do about their name being used in the media industry. Now keep in mind Batman, Turkey wants to sue the producer of the Batman movies and not DC comics, which I think is kind of funny. In the current economic crisis the world is facing I guess governments are taking extreme measures to come up with money.

Google is tracking the flu virus by monitoring searches related to the flu. A link to Google’s flu trends: Google Flu Trends. The data presented by Google is fairly accurate since they have been using the search data and data from the US government on the flu virus throughout the last few years. Google’s search data and the government data are very similar. The current information is only for the United States but Google wishes to expand the flu trends globally. Also Google wants to use this technology to analyze other trends such as AIDS and other viruses. I think this is a great tool to use in order to find out if an illness is present in a certain area. This technology could also be extended to examine other searches related to non-medical topics such as economics. Also advertising agents for companies could be interested in this technology to examine search trends in areas.

I remember when comic books started becoming movies and now many movies are being made that are based on comic book series. A genre of movies that is going to start taking off, just like the comic book movies, are movies based off of board games. Jumanji is probably the first thought of movie when someone asks you about a board game movie. Another movie set to come out in the future is a movie based on Monopoly. It will be interesting to see how Monopoly is developed into a movie. If board games are going to start becoming movies how would one develop Risk into a movie, or even a bigger challenge: chess.

Companies are starting to sign up for space during the Superbowl for advertising time. Three companies which were not participants in last years Superbowl commercials but have space for advertising this year are Monster.com, Pedigree, and eTrade.

South Korea is the broadband capital of the world. This means South Korea is extremely capable of downloading large amounts of content such as movies. That is exactly what they have been doing. The average Korean citizen downloads a movie 55.4 times a year. All motion picture companies based in the United States (Sony, Paramount, Universal, Buena Vista, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers) have stopped distribuing content legally in Korea. Warner Brothers was the last to pull out of Korea hoping the illegal activity of movie pirating would decrease, but such activity has actually spiraled out of control.

Comments on KenRadio broadcast 11/10/2008

Link to 11/10/2008 broadcast

One topic that was mentioned today which really sparked my interest was the on-going problems with Circuit City. The company has been having many financial problems lately and has now filed from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. What interests me is when Circuit City goes out of buisness there will be liquadation of the company. Now the company will want to get rid of the merchandise in the stores quickly and retain as much of the monetary value of the item as possible, so most items will go up for sale at a discounted price during a “going out of business sale.” It is cheaper for a customer to take an item out of Circuit City instead of the company having to ship the item back to the distribution centers. Now some items will actually not be sold during the “liquadation sales” such as cell phones, these most likely will be returned to the vendors. I will be keeping my eyes open in the next months for when Circuit City decides to put all the discounted price tags on the items for the last week of business.

Comments on KenRadio broadcast 8/28/2008

Google is branching out even more by laying an underwater cable that goes from the United States to Japan. From Japan it will go to countries such as The Phillipines, Singapore, Thailand, and Hong Kong. I believe connecting to this side of the world is great since a lot of business carried out in America coincides with many Asian countries. Google has always looked to extending it’s boundries; I remember a few years ago there was a rumor Google wanted to put it’s logo on the Moon — I’ll believe it when I see it.
Link to map of Google’s underwater cable: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/28/google_undersea_cable_two/

Another topic that was brought up today on the the broadcast was Twitter. I have heard of the name before but never really investigated it. I went to the homepage to find out Twitter is actually a way to keep tabs on what your friends and family are currently doing. I believe this is a big waste of time and there are other programs I already use for the same purpose: AIM and Facebook. Here people post what they are doing currently or what they have done in the past few hours. I do not need another website such as Twitter to do let me know what is happening in other peoples lives. I stopped investigating Twitter right from the homepage without even hunting for the sign-up button.

Guild Wars User Page

Well as everyone knows third year mini pets were handed out a few days ago. This event lead me to do some extensive mini pet searching on Guild Wars wiki and I ran across a research project which is calculating how often a certain minipet is opened up from a birthday present. Birthday Present Research I ended up contributing my data to the table and then this lead to me creating my User Page in Guild Wars wiki. Here is the link to my User Page, but be warned it is under construction and the coding is pretty challenging for me so it will be awhile before it looks halfway decent. BOTNGiggles User Page

Happy Third Birthday Guild Wars!

Well the birthday celebration is finally here. I was suprised to find it lasting so long. I was really excited about the Cupcake drops. I feel the cupcakes have some awesome stats and myself will be farming them pretty hard in the next hours to come. The boardwalk will open up at 12:00 Pacific Time for those of you who want to play the boardwalk games and earn victory tokens. Third Year miniatures were released on the 25th of April according to Guild Wars wiki. The first third year miniature I saw in game was on the 27th of April. Have fun and enjoy the hourly firework displays in all the main cities of each campaign.

Storage Recommendations

How many of you reading this know what a mule character is? How many of you have a mule character? I just made my second mule character not too long ago because I am a huge pack rat. I collect most gold weapons I identify and I have tons of festival items that I have collected as well. I have some suggestions to the storage system in Guild Wars.

First many of us love to collect dyes. I have at least one of every color, which makes ten colors. This also means ten slots in my storage are being used by my dyes. I was overjoyed the day when the Guild Wars staff added the crafting material storage tab. I propose an addition to storage by making a dye storage tab. A place where you can store all the dyes you collect. If a dye storage tab is not able to be made may be we can add dye slots to the material section of the storage.

My second suggestion for the storage system is a tab in the storage box for mini pets. I know most of you would agree with me that your storage is running low or will be running low due to mini pets filling up the slots. Just like we have a material section for storage we should get a tab where we can store our mini pets. We are approaching the release of the third year mini pets and in the past two years 14 mini pets were released each birthday. Which means just due to birthdays there will be 42 mini pets to collect. Now there are also 25 mini pets you can obtain outside the birthday releases. This means by the end of April 2008 there should be at least 67 mini pets that you can collect in Guild Wars. For those who like collecting mini pets, which I would like to start doing, a tab in storage devoted just to mini pets would be a welcomed upgrade.

Comments on KenRadio broadcast 04/17/2008

I was approached today from an audience member and was told my comments protaining to this show are a bit vague and need some “beefing up” in the content area. So I will try my best to provide more comments on what Ken has to say in his broadcast.

Link to 04/17/2008 broadcast

Birds chirping in the background
- Ken likes to record his shows in various places such as parks or outside eateries. He is a big fan of Starbucks.

Ken talked about Fantasy Stock Market games online. These are also referred to as virtual stock markets or by definition Prediction Markets. Ken started using howthemarketworks.com and he has had some success. I have been doing virtual stock trading for a few months, and I use vse.marketwatch.com. Ken brought up a great idea and that was to invest in stocks from many different genres. What he means by this is do not invest all your money into stocks pertaining to one industry such as technology or video games. Split your money up into technology, medical, energy, and travel. I have only one stock right now and that is in Sony, but I am going to take Ken’s advice and invest in a different industry from technology. I am leaning towards the travel industry for my next stock investment; why? Because the dollar is decreasing in value. This means foreigners will have a better reason to come and travel in the United States. Expect more tourism in the United States due to the low value of the dollar. I am not going to invest in airline companies, but candidates are those companies that are related to the hotel chains, casinos, and resorts such as Disney World.

Ken reflected a little on Facebook today. Ken said “Don’t think of facebook as a toy, but as a professional tool to communicate with people.” He also talked about how facebook in some ways is a better way to communicate with people than email. Ken uses facebook a lot to communicate with his audience. I agree with him when he says there is a lot of spam entering people’s email boxes and facebook allows messages from only your friends, so the “spam” side of getting messages is eliminated via facebook. That’s all fine and dandy and a great way to get to those important messages from people who really count, but why then did I recently deactivate my facebook account?
              I was not recieving messages from people on a daily basis like Ken is, so that benefit was not one of my reasons for staying. I removed myself from the facebook community because it is kind of difficut to filter what other people say about you and how other people portray you to the world (being tagged in a photo you would rather not want people to see). I removed myself from facebook because I did not want a future employer to search on Google, find a link to someones facebook page that has a photo or post about me which I would regret that employer seeing. Ken is right about being able to communicate better using Facebook due to spam removal, but in my case I can communicate just fine with my email, instant messaging program, or my cell phone. To wrap this segment up I just want to comment on Ken’s view of facebook as a professional tool for communication. I believe it is the exact opposite and if it is being used in my company it could very well be categorized as a distraction and time waster.

Supposidly Microsoft is thinking of acquiring Yahoo. I do not know much about this rumor but if it is true this would pose some great competition for Google. Think about it: the biggest search engine up against collaborating search engines numbers two and three. If Microsoft gets Yahoo what will become of the two email clients? Will Hotmail and Yahoo Mail merge together or will they still stay separate? Next week is when we find out who, if any, wins the Yahoo company.

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Let me know what you think of my extended comments. Do you like them more than my previous posts or do you believe they are too wordy? Let me know what you think.