Facebook phone rumor

A Facebook phone? Is it "really" that necessary?? I do not think so......

http://gigaom.com/mobile/do-we-need-a-facebook-phone-the-gigaom-debate/

Smartphone as a Microscope Viewer and Camera?

Creater Andy Miller has said that the SkyLight which consists of either your iPhone or Android phone can turn into a microscopic eyepiece for the world. The whole goal of this is to help trained medical practitioners to look at images from microscopes. Pretty much any kind of these devices (however old) will serve as an advantage by having a SkyLight attached right to a smartphone that is capable of sending life-saving images. This looks so cool and here is a video of it so you will learn more about SkyLight. It is very fascinating to watch.

http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/skylight-transforms-your-smartphone-in-to-a-microscope-viewer-and-camera-video-22-11-2011/

Big discounts on tech stuff at Microsoft stores

So how many of you took advantage of the discounts that Microsoft cut for Black Friday on games, laptops, Kinect, etc at one of its store? Incase you did not and are curious about how much the prices have been going for, I'll mention them in this blog post. The sales actually end today, so take advantage of them before Tuesday hits.

As of now, a Samsung RC512 notebook (with Windows 7) is going for $499 (normally $799) while an Acer Iconia Dual-Screen Touchbook goes for $400 cheaper at $599. They are also giving away a free Windows Phone with a two-year service agreement (Don't you hate those???) and even a Office Home and Student suit of software for $120. That originally went for $150. As far as games are concerned, for $200, you would get an Xbox Ultimate Gaming Bundle that comes with accessories, a game as well as a 90-day Xbox Live membership.

If you are a huge fan of sports games such as Madden, Microsoft iss selling "Madden 2012" for a pretty good discount. Roughly almost by half! Hopefully one of you have able to take advantage of those discounts and they are not going to last much longer. Apple's discounts have been much less where they have been slashing prices on their iPods, iPads as well as Macs by less than 10%. Microsoft is the way to go in terms of this!

New technology in Airport Security

I heard that there will be new technology used for the future of airport security. It seems like the International Air Transport Association (IATA) wants to use neon-lit tunnels that contain eye-scanners, x-ray machines, and metal as well as liquid detectors. It is noted that this is a part of their vision for the checkpoint of the future.

Passengers will have a "travel profile" and will be brought into one of three passageways. Travelers who have completed background checks with government authorities (They are called "Known Travelers.") will go through a light blue colored corridor with barely more than just an ID check. People who go through the yellow corridor will face an order of iris scans and contraband detectors that are very sensitive. The IATA hopes to have those checkpoints ready in airports within the next five to seven years.

There has also been a powerful lie-detection thermal-image camera created by U.K. researchers that can easily detect somebody lying. It is being noted that this could be very useful during customs interviews as well as at passport control for those who plan on coming into the country. The camera is so powerful that it can record different variations in the facial temperature when the person is answering questions. According to professor Hassan Ugail leading the research, he states that a person's brain activity changes when making something up which can easily be detected by the camera. It is currently being tested at an airport but the name has not been released.

There has also been Bluetooth passenger tracking where an airport can track Bluetooth signals in order to look at the passenger's movements all around the air terminal. They gather all the information to estimate the waiting times at the security gate. This has been used at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport in Ventaa, Finland.

The Transport Security Administration (TSA) here in the U.S. have been using Behavioural Detection Officers where passengers are engaged in casual conversation by them in order to detect any distrustful behavior. About 161 airports are using these officers all across the nation and watch out when one of them comes up and starts up a conversation about anything. They may think that you have something to hide.

Who uses Format Factory?

This is such a very useful media converter program that will convert a lot of different files such as audio, video, ROM/DVD, CD/ISO, and even pictures. I use the program quite a bit such as whenever I am converting from FLAC to WAV or MP3, OGG to WAV or MP3, MP4 to MP3, WMV to AVI, and much more. It even has advanced features such as setting the bitrate when converting from WAV to MP3 It comes in really handy if you want to save some hard drive space from those converted mp3s by picking a 128 KB/s. The audio will still sound very good to your ears (It is advised not to go anywhere lower than 96 KB/s or you will notice the sound quality sounding bad due to a lot of data being lost.). Anyways, I strongly recommend this program because you never know when it will come in handy and plus, it is completely free!

The joys of mp3gain

How many of you are sick and tired of having to adjust the volume button everytime you are listening to music? It is very frustrating how certain songs on albums tend to be either softer or louder in decibels. It literally drove me crazy four years ago and after doing some research, I finally found an extremely useful program. It is called mp3gain and this small program will analyze as well as adjust any of your mp3 files so they will all have the same volume in dB (decibels). What a blessing this was for me and it is free too! I hated how one song would be 95.7 dB while the next would be 88.2 dB where you are reaching for that volume button. In mp3 gain, you can set all your mp3 files at a certain dB level where it will either add or subtract a certain number of decibels to your mp3 file(s). When you are doing this, try not to increase the volume up too much or part of the audio will sound distorted. Anyways, when mp3gain is applying the changes, they are all lossless meaning that none of the audio's quality is lost. This is due to the fact that the mp3 files are adjusted without having to decode and re-encode. I am aware that music players such as ipods and mp3 players have a smart volume feature but a big problem is that it hogs up about twice as much battery power. Who wants that?! This is when mp3gain comes in very handy and you will be very happy when all your mp3s will be set at the same decibel level.

Many technologies will be used for NASA's "Curiosity" rover

Well, I just heard that NASA's rover called "Curiosity" is scheduled to launch on the 26th of November which really excites me. The rover measures almost 1 T and it will contain many different technologies. Curiosity's main focus is to determine if there is any new evidence that Mars can or had been able to contain microbial life. In other words, scientists want to know if Mars has any chemical ingredients that are required for life. It is estimated that Curiosity will arrive into the red Jovian planet's thin atmosphere at roughly 5,150 km/h where it will reach to the floor of a crater measuring 161 km in width.

Technologies will be used such as sky crane technology as well as a new guidance type of system. The whole point of those will be to control Curiosity's flight computer and change the entry vehicle's flight path. This will be relied on atmospheric conditions. The rover will use a chemistry-sensing laser to blow up and analyze any samples of rock. It will also use a drill-equipped robot arm to send samples to the chemistry lab that is inside the rover. This will be done for more analysis. Curiosity will also use a Mast Camera to snap high-resolution pictures as well as video of the Martian landscape. It will even have a Mars Hand Lens Imager, Mars Descent Imager, and Sample Analysis at Mars. An Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer will also be used for taking measurements of chemical elements in Martian dirt and rocks. This spectrometer will do so by blasting out powerful X-rays as well as helium nuclei where it will cause electrons to go out of their orbits resulting in a release of X-rays.

I will be very excited once this rover is launched and it will truly be amazing if NASA scientists will be able to find out if there really are any signs of microbial life. There has been so many different missions launched to Mars by the United States and the Russians but this one will contain more advanced technologies. In the future, I really look forward to learn more about Curiosity's results and see how much history will be made.

CSU East Bay internet = slowwwwwwwww but there is an alternative

In my opinion, CSU East Bay's wireless internet needs to be faster. Sometimes it is so slow whenever I am trying to do homework here in the campus library which drives me crazy. Even my wireless network at home is quicker! However, I found a solution which is to bring a CAT-5 cable where you can plug it into one of the school's network ports. I noticed the internet is faster this way compared to their wireless since so many turkeys are always using it.

Well, the Android won

Incase if you were wondering, the Android easily won last quarter over in the smartphone competition. It consumed 52.5% of the global market share which literally almost doubled from last summer. iOS did not do well at all and they even dropped from 16.6% to 15% while Symbian went to 17%. Two causes regarding Apple's decrease in market share had to do with consumers who waited a while for a rumored new iPhone and also for lower prices in older iPhones. Congratulations to the Android!

Nook vs Kindle Fire: which one is better ?

Well, it turns out that Barnes & Noble just released the Nook Tablet today so they can go compete with Kindle Fire. Both tablets are not as expensive compared to the iPads but which one is better?

As of now, the Nook Tablet is going for $249.00 while Kindle Fire's is $50 cheaper at $199.00. Both tablets contain the same touch-sensitive screen (7 in) including customized versions of Google Android but the Nook has twice as much storage space at 16 GB compared to Kindle's which you may think has to be its largest advantage. However, do not forget to read the fine print though since only 1 GB on the Nook can be used for content that is not from Barnes & Noble. A total of 2 GB will be used for the operating system leaving you with a total of 13 GB for content. In a more technical view, this pretty much means that 12 GB will be for Nook apps as well as e-books while the rest is for all of your music and videos. If you really want more storage space, the Nook comes with a microSD card slot where you can have up to 32 GB of unrestricted storage. This is another great advantage since the Kindle does not have that. The only downside is that it just creates another expense where those microsSD cards are going for about $20.00 at Best buy.

Despite the fact that Kindle Fire only has an 8 GB storage capacity (≈ ¼ is for the operating system), the remaining space absolutely contains no restrictions at all and users can even store as much Amazon content online to free up some space. This is really good news in terms of having more space for outside content.

The Nook contains much longer battery life at 11.5 hours for reading or 9 hours of video. Kindle Fire's only has 8 hours for reading and a measily 7.5 hours of video with the Wi-Fi shut off. This will cause many shoppers to think twice about purchasing this particular one if they are absolute sticklers on good battery life. Both devices also have different weights of 14.1 oz (Nook) and 14.6 oz (Kindle) where you will not feel the difference at all. In terms of books, Kindle's contains more than a million current titles as well as 2 million out-of-date copyright while the Nook has more than 2.5 million titles.

Crappy Internet Explorer is going down.....yes!

(Source: http://www.iesucks.info/2009/04/wanted-internet-explorer-dead-asap/)

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/03/tech/web/internet-explorer-traffic-share-mashable/index.html

I just recently read about how Internet Explorer's web traffic has finally started decreasing thanks to Apple's Safari web browser. Safari takes up about 62% of mobile traffic while Internet Explorer accounts for almost 53% of desktop traffic (This was from a website called Netmarketshare.com.). It also has been taking over the mobile web by collecting approximately 7% of the market. As of now, Safari's share rate is even quicker than the iPhone's. The reason that IE has taken a dive has to do with its inexistence with tablet and mobile devices. It just seems that they do not want to keep up with Safari.

Based on other current statistics, Mozila Firefox (my favorite web browser) placed second in the most popular browser since last month claiming about 21% of traffic while Google Chrome's has been almost 17% and Safari a bit shy of 9%. Chrome has also been doing very well in the desktop market at almost 1.5% by facing a lot of expansion last month.

To be quite honest, I have never been a fan of Internet Explorer and I am glad that it finally does not dominate as much web trafffic anymore. IE is pure garbage and for anyone designing webpages, it can make things even tougher when you are trying to get your website completely compatible with that broswer. This has happened to me before in the past where a few web pages of mine would look perfect in other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox but not in Internet Explorer because it would not support certain CSS properties such as the caption-side and hovers. This was back when IE 7 was the latest browser but some computers I used at school to work on web design homework had version 6 with no Firefox installed either. It was horrible and IE can easily be a web designer's nightmare.

Another reason has to do with its slowness such as when loading it up, browsing web pages, opening tabs (This was with hardly any toolbars or add-ons enabled), and not displaying certain webpages properly. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari seemed around twice as fast and displayed the pages correctly. Also, IE would freeze many times and I was always good at maintaining the browser as well as my computer. Other browsers are much better such as Mozilla. IE just sucks. I do not even like interface either in versions 7, 8 as well as 9 and prefer the older one instead in versions 6, 5, 4, 3, etc.

Firefox has been my favorite browser since 2005 and my favorite one in the old days was Netscape Navigator 3 (I remember using that in mid 1998) as well as Netscape Communicator (I used versions 4.61 [I remember being so happy and downloading it back in July, 1999 at the age of 13. Haha.] all the way to 4.8 and then upgraded to version 6, 7 before moving over to Firefox.).

Internet Explorer really needs to keep up in the competition or they will continue going downhill (I hope!).