22 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(04/22/12 4:01am)
Only a few close friends and family members know about my childhood obsession with astronomy and the universe in general. I was a huge Star Wars fan (still am) and had every space-themed Lego set imaginable. My parents bought me books and my room in the house I lived in in Austin, Texas, was painted like the inside of the space shuttle cockpit. The one dream I had as a kid was to be the first human being on Mars.
(04/18/12 4:01am)
Being a tech blog by an ASU student that's read by ASU students, it would make sense to write about technology and ASU. If anything, startups are the hottest thing in the tech world right now. It seems there are five new ones every day. What's even cooler is that some of those startups are born from the minds of ASU students.
(04/15/12 4:01am)
The recent passing of the JOBS Act by Congress and then the President will “make it possible for entrepreneurs to raise money from anyone they want to,” according to Rafe Needleman of CNET.com. This is a huge step forward for what is known as “crowdfunding.” Crowdfunding as defined by Wikipedia is “the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together...to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.” It has become commonplace for smaller investments for projects ranging from music videos to consumer products like watches. Sites such as Kickstarter and CrowdTilt provide the platform for small-scale investing. But with the passing of the bill, everyday people will become venture capitalists.
(04/11/12 9:21pm)
When people hear the words minimalism or living simply, they often think of someone who owns only 50 things and lives out of a box. This is a little misguided. The idea behind minimalism is that you pare down the material things in your life to the essentials. Only keep what is necessary so that you can focus your time and energy on more worthwhile things like family, friends, career, passions or education.
(04/11/12 4:01am)
If you pay attention to the tech world on a regular basis, you know how often news stories of companies suing each other occur. If you don’t pay attention, you’re lucky. On an almost-daily basis there is a company suing another company because they infringed on patents. Whether it’s a patent on a certain design or whether it’s an idea or concept for a product, companies (or their lawyers) are relentless.
(04/08/12 4:01am)
Last week Google revealed their plans for creating glasses that keep you connected with their services in a visual manner. The glasses, which are basically a frame sans lenses with a tiny projector attached, look like something out of a sci-fi movie. But the future is bound to arrive someday, maybe just not this soon. The video accompanying the announcement shows a person going through his daily routine, but instead of using a phone, he uses the glasses to communicate with his friend, get directions, and even video chat. I still think the video, while incredibly awesome, shows that Google isn’t quite there yet. There are some serious hurdles that they have to navigate before they release a final product.
(04/04/12 4:01am)
Last week, Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of Blackberry phones, released their quarterly earnings. They were down $125 million from last quarter and announced layoffs of key executives. RIM has been dealing with stability issues for the past year or so. They’ve been consistently losing revenue, changing leadership and shipping mediocre products like the Playbook tablet. Other companies like LG, Motorola, HTC and Samsung have done all right but could be doing a lot better. How does Apple fit into this? Apple is the main reason RIM is failing.
(04/01/12 4:01am)
Chances are you own a smartphone. It can do some incredible things. We can connect with people all around the world in an instant just with a few taps of our fingers. It’s amazing, but it’s only just starting. Even with the technology in most smartphones being top of the line, there is still room for growth. The biggest improvement over the last few years has been in cameras.
(03/28/12 4:01am)
We see it everywhere now: Industry after industry has to either adjust or radically change their business models in order to not just stay competitive but survive in this connected world. Changes that are made to adapt to social media mainly take place in news media and education. Due to innovative websites like Twitter, the entire newspaper industry has had to either rework the way they do things or perish. The last time I checked, around 180 newspapers around the country have gone bankrupt or just disappeared.
(03/14/12 4:01am)
We’ve all heard about this social media movement that's going to bring down a murderous psychopath. I'm not going to get into the details of the controversy surrounding the Kony 2012 campaign, but it brings up an important issue. A Facebook and Twitter campaign for awareness of any given social movement is obviously a smart move. But, as we can see it's not going to do much apart from spreading a message.
(03/11/12 5:01am)
Almost two weeks ago, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft announced the release of their Consumer Preview for Windows 8. Windows 8 is their newest update to the Windows operating system and brings a large number of changes. The main difference is the layout and design. It's been completely revamped to match the Metro UI of the Windows Phone OS. This has been a topic of discussion not only in terms of Microsoft staying in the game but about where their OS is headed.
(03/08/12 5:01am)
Yesterday morning the third and newest generation iPad was announced. There was much speculation over whether it would be called iPad 3 or iPad HD, due to the higher-resolution screen, but neither was the case. This wasn’t a mind blowing announcement. Many people in the tech world had a solid idea of what changes were being made and seemed to be disappointed. Apparently, the fact that their iPad doesn’t allow them to teleport is making them angry. There was even an issue of whether or not it would have the usual home button. It’s pretty pathetic that with all the problems in the world, people are worried the new iPad may not have had a home button. Well it did, so we can keep pushing back doomsday on our calendars.
(03/04/12 5:01am)
If there were one site that represented our society at the current moment it would have to be Pinterest. Pinterest is a site where you "pin" images to a "board" and that's it. You can search for images of people, places and things, and “repin” them to your profile if you like them. There really is nothing else. You can comment on each pin, but it's not the main purpose. Some interesting facts include: It was one of the first sites to reach 10 million unique monthly visitors and its user base is almost 70% female. So far, pretty simple.
(02/29/12 5:01am)
Last week the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the White House released what they're calling the consumer bill of rights for online privacy. It's in clear response to the constant complaints about privacy issues on sites like Facebook and Google. Consumers have been speaking out against the fact that they themselves allow companies like Facebook and Google to track their movements online in order to provide a better product and user experience. Other issues like the Carrier IQ and Path controversies played a role in this as well.
(02/25/12 5:01am)
Last week I wrote a post on my personal blog about the future of “social” and how it’s changing from the “sharing” that we currently do to the “doing” that new apps are growing in popularity. I found out about a company called 6Wunderkinder based in Berlin, Germany, that has two products. One is Wunderlist which is a simple task manager app for desktops, browsers, and mobile devices. The other is Wunderkit.
(02/22/12 5:01am)
Move it to the Cloud
(02/19/12 5:01am)
“Blackboard’s down again?!”
(02/15/12 5:01am)
Back in December I bought a new phone at Best Buy. I went in knowing exactly which phone I was getting; Many people aren't as lucky. When I walked into the mobile phone section of the store there an employee was trying to help an older lady buy a phone. "Trying" is the keyword there. He was throwing out specs that not only don't matter to the lady, but they don't matter at all. I'd bet the average consumer doesn't care if it has a 1.4 or 1.5mhz processor or if it has 1 GB or 1.5 GB of RAM. People want a phone that will run the apps they want, make calls, and last them a while. Same goes for laptops. Obviously everyone has their own personal preferences in terms of screen size and portability, but we have reached a point where there are so many choices when it comes to buying consumer electronics that it's impossible to actually make a choice. In my mind there are really only four phones and five laptops on the market worth buying, but consumers are subject to 50+ phones and 25+ laptops. We must stop this constant production. It's detrimental to the progress of technology. We need to simplify.
(02/12/12 5:01am)
When you made your new year’s resolutions they were probably more along the lines of getting in shape or saving up money for something you’ve wanted for months. What about learning to code? For free? In late December, a company named Codecademy launched an initiative to make learning how to code a new year’s resolution for anyone who signed up. Only a few days after announcing the initiative, almost 100,000 people had signed up and were ready to get started. It’s closer to 350,000 now and it’s also worth noting that this got the President’s attention and now has a separate initiative to teach kids in low-income areas how to code for free this summer.
(02/08/12 5:34am)
Google has an unofficial motto – “Don’t be evil” -- that has come into question the past few weeks. By making that their motto they’ve opened themselves up to even more criticism. The moment they make a mistake that users don’t like, it’s automatically evil. I think this is ridiculous. I should point out that I’m a big Google fan myself. I use almost all of their products and I have an Android phone, but this doesn’t mean they haven’t done stupid things. Google Wave and Buzz were awful, just awful, but I will stand up and defend them when necessary.