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HTML 5 Rolls Out

10 May

Forget waiting around for pages to load and clicking off sites that you need. The Internet is expanding at an alarming rate and developers are now creating sophisticated systems to encourage this continuous growth. A major development in the nineties came in the form of Macromedia’s Flash. An additional plug-in which is required to work in harmony with your Internet browser, this is a service which hasn’t been integrated into web browsers and these browsers haven’t supported video on their own before now.

HTML 5 changes all that. You will no longer have to install third party programmes to view on-line content and those black splodges across the web will play their media automatically. The changes are rapidly being applied to company websites using early versions of the code. Businesses can’t wait for the seamless web experience that is HTML 5.

Apple’s external devices which can connect wirelessly to the Internet (iPhone, iPod and iPad) have never been equipped with Flash because, former boss, Steve Jobs wouldn’t allow it to feature on his devices. However, the flexibility of those devices is now being stretched to cover technology which hasn’t been Internet-enabled before.

A few months ago we covered the kitchen tech which is taking the world by storm, we talked about fridges which will run apps on touch screens and HTML5 is another massive step in that direction. Mobile app environments are being replicated for the web and browser updates help you to adopt the new features. These changes will be gradual and, unless you are aware of HTML5, you won’t even notice this evolution.

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Anchor Pirate Bay!

2 May

Pirate Bay has had a court ruling in the UK for the service to be blocked by UK Internet service providers. The Swedish file sharing website provides links to pirated free music and video content. The High Court has stated that the site infringes copyright law and destroys jobs in the UK.

Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, O2 and Everything Everywhere must all prevent their users from accessing the site. BT has asked for extra time to consider their options over whether to block the website.

Previous attempts to block the website were thwarted by the ISPs, they refused to do so unless a court order was made, this is now the case. The group of friends who launched the site in 2003 were found guilty by the Swedish Courts of helping people to infringe copyright controls. The site itself still operates, even after the ruling was upheld following an appeal.

The people who work to create the content deserve to be paid for their products, this includes the likes of sound engineers and video editors; but as the problem persists with younger people persisting in downloading illegal content, it becomes apparent that calls for Internet censorship in the UK are getting louder.

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FYI YouTube – I Cried

24 Apr

I can understand the need to express opinions about things that I find online. Comment boxes are a common addition to social media which allow us to speak to people across the globe about what we have (or don’t have) in common. The Like Button is another medium by which we display the things we enjoy on our profiles for Facebook, Google+ etc, though it is less capable of defining what goes through our minds when we think about or see something which affects us one way or the other.

Would you go so far as to publicise the fact that you cried after seeing something?

Project Goodcry is as an experiment intended to make crying a collective experience. It’s a button which users can install using the Chrome App Store. We have been able to rate content using stars for some time. Now, YouTube allows us to rate videos using tear drops; watching videos has suddenly been opened up to our emotions, give them a thumbs up and a cry rating.

The general consensus here is that the web is trying to become more human, but I would say that there are some things which people might prefer to keep private?

We’ll see in the coming weeks whether this has an impact!

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DIY Chocolate!!

11 Apr

Fancy printing your own designs using chocolate?

A 3D printer has been developed to use liquefied chocolate as ‘ink’. The device prints layers on top of one another after allowing each one to solidify.  This building effectively turns 2D layers into 3D shapes. The machine is set for release at the end of this month.

Retailers are already expressing interest in the product as the market for chocolate is huge across the world. Users would be able to print their own unique designs allowing them to be creative with their treat. The technology is already available in other sectors such as footwear and jewellery but is expanding into the food preparation industry. You will be able to create any design you want from your computer and print it there and then.

The ‘ink’ will be fed into the printer using a syringe; I am sure that the supply of readily available chocolate in shops will make the purchase of ink much cheaper and easier to purchase than regular printer ink.

The possibilities of printing with chocolate are endless… you are only limited by your own imagination!

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Remember Dial-Up?

3 Apr

If you think that your 100mb broadband connection just isn’t fast enough, spare a thought for the residents of Darwin. Located west of  California’s Death Valley, these people are living in the stone age compared to us.

There may only be 35 residents in the town, but they can sit and wait for several minutes for a website to load, if it bothers to at all.

The town itself is protected from development; that doesn’t stop the people who live there wanting the same advantages of broadband in their homes.  Resident Larry Kraus makes a cooked breakfast and eats it in the time it takes for one page to load using his dial-up connection.

Ironically, my browser is struggling to buffer a video right now which I have already watched in the last five minutes… however, it took me only 2 minutes to log in to my services and get going this morning, a far cry from the residents of Darwin. Refreshing the page just took me 2 seconds and the video is now working again.

Residents are willing to pay for services they can use to enable them to access the web like the rest of us. They are willing to pay for hardware so that they can get surfing.

A fibre optic cable is being considered to run along a nearby highway, the home owners are hoping that this will give them the opportunity to log in.

To see the video, click here

So, what’s the moral in the story?

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Children plus Twitter = Improved Education?

27 Mar

Jacqui Murray has identified some interesting concepts in her article ‘13 ways Twitter Improves Education‘. Social media in the classroom is often defined as a distraction and is generally discouraged as an activity. With technologies such as Twitter and Facebook emerging as major business and marketing tools, perhaps they should be regarded in a more favourable light.

The main benefit of using the platforms is that they encourage interaction and engagement. Some children don’t have the confidence to share ideas audibly in the classroom; the option to type their responses to material into Twitter gives them the motivation to get involved. From here, the tutor or fellow children can express interest in what they have to say and invite them into the discussion, this demonstrates how opinions are valued because it generates feedback. It could be that the child is unsure of something, responses from people in the room can develop their understanding of the importance of communication to solve such issues.

Typing allows users to evaluate and reconsider what they want to say. This is encouraged by Twitter itself as tweets can only be 140 characters long. Children learn to be concise in getting their thoughts across to their audience.

There is no fight for the floor in a Twitter conversation. People can’t be drowned out by the loudest participant because every tweet sent is published on the feed. You can respond to thoughts which may never have surfaced otherwise, students have to tolerate all thoughts as the tutor can pick and choose what to discuss based on the tweets by their class. Of course, tweets can incite a flurry of creativity in the push to get ideas through to the masses.

The children aren’t limited to lesson time if they have a query or would like to share something they find interesting. @ tags allow the tutor to review comments made outside of class and they could spark a renewed discussion to clear up a problem which may be affecting more people than the original tweeter. Sharing notes online via tweets could help to eradicate the confusion. Notes by other students can form a comprehensive guide to the subject in consideration and cement the ideas in the mind more effectively.

I still believe that face to face interaction and teaching is of vital importance to young people’s learning, but mixing it with Twitter aided sessions can be a welcome addition to a course.

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It’s All ME ME ME!

23 Mar

It seems that if there’s one thing people like to talk about, it’s themselves!

Status updates on Facebook are turning into streaming diaries of trivial information which, in truth, we really couldn’t care less about. Every now and again somebody will post something which proves very popular, it can be anything from a photo (where – shockingly – everyone likes the look of themselves) to a status which applies to a group of people. They can all relate to and ‘like’ the image.

Facebook Timeline and Favourite or re-tweeted tweets highlight the best of the bunch. With the ever growing popularity of infographics on the Internet, Intel has combined social networks with graphics and you (the best bit!) to create personalised infographics which relate only to the user.

The app selects self created info from your social media pages to produce a visualisation of you. It also generates information based on your likes and ‘most talked about’ subjects of interest including statistics on your most popular interactions and posts. There is a graph set out much like a flower which gives you percentages for the amount of tweets/posts you make about your different interests. Apparently, our sister company, EMS Media tweet about technology 65% of the time! Go figure…

Further down the infographic, it also gives you a percentage for the amount of time you spend on social media during the day or later at night; at EMS Media we post our updates during the day 85% of the time.

Intel brand the infographics with one of their logos; every time you share your graphic with friends, they get a plug.

Yes it may promote narcissism, but for those of us who are more interested in the site from a social or technological perspective, it’s an extremely thought provoking tool and an insight into your online habits; might you be surprised by yours?

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Would You Give Your Boss Access To Your Facebook Account?

21 Mar

We have all been warned about our personal uses of social networking sites and their correlation with the impression we give of the company we work for, but is handing over our private lives really the answer? A US firm caused a stir by asking job applicants to give their details over if their profiles appear as ‘Private’. This practice of asking for user names and passwords was stopped last year.

Some people like to post material which is more indicative of their activities than they might think, moderating the content you post makes it simpler for friends and followers to avoid crossing the line into privacy invasion.

In Maryland US, Employers are asking potential employees to log into sites whilst they watch. This is voluntary but nearly all applicants agree to the process in fear of jeopardising their chances of securing the job. Some companies had a policy that a manager had to befriend the employees so that they could monitor the content posted. As well as a personal violation of privacy, the monitoring of sites is against Facebook’s terms of service. They say that users should not allow others to  access their account or do anything which might jeopardise the security of the account.

The line between personal and work life is blurring in the use of social media. Yes you want to protect and maintain the image of your brand, but you can’t take away the freedom of speech which the likes of Facebook and Twitter gives the public. Some companies highlight the use of social media in their contracts and advise against badmouthing businesses, is this enough to educate employees about the safe use of websites? Or do we need to be more vigilant? How will this debate be solved?

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Forgotten your Password?

20 Mar

How often are we reminded not to use the same password over and over again? It poses massive risks to the security of our files and information; but how on earth are we supposed to remember a phrase which includes random Capitalised letters, under_scores and numb3rs?

Different websites require formats which must have a number in it and, if you are trying to use a password consistently, it can be very difficult to remember its variations in use across the web. I use a programme called LastPass which remembers all my passwords but I still seem to manage to mess up entering the right information in the first place, often rendering the program useless as I keep having to request new passwords.

If we’re going to be clever enough to store our passwords somewhere for ease of access, surely the file will need to be password protected to safeguard our personal information, how ironic.

This is where the need for a different approach arises. Researchers at Pace University road-tested a software which recognises the way a person types as proof of their identity. They say it’s 99.5% accurate. Named ‘Active Authentication’ it analyses keystrokes instead of key combinations. They cite that typing is a motor skill which is connected to our sub-concious and that it would be near impossible for another person to replicate the strokes.

The program itself would have to run continuously in the background to make sure that the same person is using the computer, could this add to the list of applications which slow our computers down?

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Firefox Blazing Ahead in 2012

15 Mar

FireFox have revealed some exciting changes for their newest edition of their popular web browser.

They will be updating security features which will allow users to manage how they are being tracked on the web. Privacy for Internet users is a number one priority and this is reflected in their plans to update sign in processes and many other features relating to security. They aim to improve the stability of the website by monitoring memory usage, thereby improving usability.

They understand that, as web capabilities increase, so does the need for a responsive system which works alongside the user to deliver the best experience possible. FireFox will be working to eradicate known issues which users face to also strengthen the browser itself, this is to accommodate avid users such as application developers.

They are striving to deliver a:

  • web-wide people-centric identity system
  • complete web apps ecosystem
  • no-compromises mobile browser

Major advances in HTML, CSS, Javascript and web developer tools will ‘enable users to experience app-quality experiences and developer productivity that rivals native platforms.’

To read more about the developments, click here

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