Google Street View

I just discovered this the other day when I was trying to get directions to go somewhere. I was on google maps and had just typed in an address in London. I clicked on the location, then it asked me for street view. I had no idea what it was so i decided to click on it. To my huge surprise, I was looking at a street view of the store I was looking for. What surprised me even more was that this was not an assortment of pictures, as they have on Google Earth, but it was an actual flowing view of the street, as if i was there in the middle of the road. I first thought Google Earth was the most amazing thing ever. On Google Earth I could travel the world from the comfort of my desk chair. Yet I was only able to see an areal view of the place, I could never actually see the buildings and other things on the street level. Yet now, I can literally go anywhere and see anything from the street. Google Street View is a function of Google Maps. When you type in an address in google maps you can sometimes have the option of seeing street view. You can then view the map on satellite mode which allows you to better see the actual world. Unfortunately there are some drawbacks to Google Street View. One of them is that you can not see every street view in the world. The way Google gets its Street Views is that they send a car down a road with a bunch of cameras on the top. These cameras take high resolution videos of the street. The car drives down every road it can and records the "Street View" of a place. Obviously these videos are taken during the day. I actually encountered one of these cars one day when my and I were walking back from lunch at Abbey Road. The car was a regular car, yet it had a ridiculous amount of cameras on the roof of it, pointing in every direction. At the time I had no idea what it was for, yet the other day I finally figured it out. Unlike Google Earth, I can't really see any security risks that Google Street View could cause. I mean, they only take pictures of public roads, roads that anyone can walk on. So, unlike Google Earth, they don't show images of secret army bases in the desert. Google Street View is really cool and I am sure I will use it a lot in the future, not only to find directions but also to explore the world.

Virgin Atlantic? No, Virgin Galactic

Have you ever dreamed of taking a ride around in a space ship? Being able to see the entire earth from space? Well, until now you had to be a trained astronaut to do that. You had to join the Air Force (or be an extremely smart scientist), take difficult exams about science and math, and possibly be selected to go on a once in 5 year space mission. The odds were definitely against you. Yet now, for the meager sum of 121,000 pounds, you can take a two and a half hour space ride. And have around five minutes of zero gravity. How is this possible? Well, the innovative Sir Richard Branson has done it. His company, Virgin, has now created a branch called Virgin Galactic. The prototype was unveiled yesterday in the Mojave desert by Branson and the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenager. A small, sixe seater space craft will be attached to a bi cockpit airplane, with the space craft attached in the middle. The airplane will carry the spacecraft to around 50,000 feet above the earth, then it will release the spacecraft. The spacecraft will then turn on its turbo engines which will propel the spacecraft into space, 100 miles away. The spacecraft will then travel for a while, then come back into the atmosphere and land as a normal aircraft would. The first international spaceport is being set up in the desert in New Mexico, and Virgin Galactic is spending 400 million dollars on a fleet of six planes. There is already a long list of bookings especially by famous Hollywood actors. This is definitely the way of the future. Though it may seem strange now, and expensive, this could be our generations airplanes. Just like our grandparents, we think of this as weird, but I'm sure this will be the norm in a short while.

Tech n'vironment

Recently in class we talked about this X-Factor type show that had, instead of singing, a competition to determine gadget of the year. The show worked similarly to X-Factor in that there were three judges who rated the "performance" or presentation. Also, the audience got to vote on which gadget was the best. However, this competition is not the main focus of this blog post. One of the gadgets presented really caught my eye, even though it did not end up winning. The gadget that really caught my interest was a solar powered mobile phone. These phones are now starting to be produced by brand name companies such as LG and Samsung. One of the technology judges claimed that these types of phones should be the norm now, so that is the reason he did not think it was that cool. I agree with the judge in that I think these types of phones should be the norm in our society today. We don't realize it, but a lot of energy goes into powering a cell phone, especially phones like iPhones and similar products. More and more people of almost all ages are getting cellphones in developed countries. This means more people who need to charge it. Also, in a majority of lesser developed countries, mobile phones are preffered because not many people are able to keep or a fford landlines. In 2008 around 4.1 billion people in the world had mobile phones. That means 60% is taking up a lot of power to charge their mobile phones almost every day. This sole action greatly contributes to the rising CO2 emissions and affects the climate change. However, there is a solution to this problem, at least for many of these mobile phone users: the solar powered phone. These phones have small solar panels on their backs which directly feed to teh phone's battery. That means, people in semi-sunny weather (not England) can charge their phones without using any of the earth's precious resources. And, the great thing is, these phones are about the same price as most current mobile phones. Hopefully people will start to pick up on the solar powered cell phones and can help the earth. See, technology and helping the environment can go hand-in-hand.

Personal Information

I just read an article on BBC.co.uk about how some T-moblie employees sold the personal data of millions of its customers. This information was sold to list brokers who then sell the information to telemarketers or rival companies. This is a big problem because it is not only these employees who do this. Everytime you use you nectar points card, that infromation about what products you bought is recorded then sold by the nectar company to other companies. These companies then sell the information to outside sources who use the info to get you to buy different things. sainsburys can buy that information about you then uses it to send you emails or call your house to try and get you to buy their products that your normally buy. This is crazy because it seems that everytime you write down your telephone number or email somwhere, someone else is getting you personal data and using it to sell you something. For now it is just annoying telemarketers calling up, but later on this personal data could be used in a bad way, to harm you. That is what will be very bad.

Google Earth

Google Earth is really cool. It's basically like a giant world map that you can zoom in and out of. The great thing is that it is not just a map, but an interactive one. Many countries have all the roads marked, and you can use it for directions. Also, Google Earth is linked with Wikipedia. This is really helpful because a lot of famous sites are marked to their Wikipedia page, so you don't need to go back to the internet. Also, many people have loaded images they have taken at different places, and have put it on the corresponding places. So you can look at the zoomed in map, and see a picture of the place. The great thing is, a lot of places have really good satellite images so you can zoom in really close and even see people on the road. Now, on Google, they have Google Maps which is basically the same thing as Google Earth without the Wikipedia links and photos. Yet on Google Maps, you can type in an address and get directions. This is a great tool for fun and for work.

eBooks

I recently saw something interesting online. eBook. An eBook is a book that you can purchase online, and read on your computer. I don't know if I like this. I like to read a lot, and I've always been fond of having physical books around. Amazon now has this thing called Kindle. Kindle is a wireless reading device that you can upload books on for a small fee. I can see some reasons to get this, but there are a lot of drawbacks. One of the good things about it is that you can have many books on one device, that can be carried around almost anywhere. Yet physical books have abeen around for a long time. I've always been a fan of having a book to hold and then keeping it on my shelf for a later time. Also, imagine if you were on the tube or the bus late at night. Your more likely to get robbed if you were holding a Kindle, that retails around $200, rather than holding a book. I prefer good old books rather than eBooks. Maybe I'm just old fashoned.

eMoney

I was at the corner store the other day and realized that i was few pence short. Luckily the guy behind the counter said it was ok and i left the store with all my purchases. This got me thinking about money and technology. Is it possible that governments will start issuing electronic money? I know we have credit cards and bank cards, but theres only so much you can buy with that. I mean, try to go to a corner store and buy a pack of gum with an American Express card, it just doesnt happen. Maybe governements will issue cards that are directly linked to your bank and ll stores had a machine that you swiped your card on and it took out money from your account. Yet I can see so many flaws with a system like this. Firstly most developing nations would not be able to do something like this due to lack of infrastructure. Also, governemnts could easily monitor the exact products we buy, which will somehow infringe on our right to privacy. And also, people who engage in "shady" businesses will no longer be able to do so because they deal in all cash so it could not be traced back to them. I guess there really is no upside to eMoney except convinience.

Mac or PC?

When I was younger I only used a PC. The first computer my family ever got was this huge Dell with windows 95. Then we moved onto a HP, just as big, then finally the last desktop we got was a Gateway. Up until 10th grade I had only used Mac's in school. For some reason our school loved Macs. At the time I was never particularly fond of Macs, you couldn't play all the cool games that PC had. But by the time I was in 10th grade, almost everyone i knew who had a laptop, had one from Mac. I've never been very good with computers, so I never really saw the difference. Yet all my friends who had a Mac loved them so much. It was like a cult following. I eventually needed a laptop for school, so my parents bought me a Mac. I like it, but I really dont see how it is superior to a PC. I mean, I would rather have a Mac, but I dont really understand the difference. Apple is clearly making a lot of money because of these Mac computers, everywhere you go you see someone with it. Yet it may come as a surprise to you, but PC making companies sell astronomically more computers than Apple does, hence they make bigger profits. Weird right?

Nature

Though this a technology blog, I want to talk about nature. I feel people now days are not getting in touch with nature as much as people used to. My parents said they used to spend hours upon hours in the woods and outdoors. When I was younger, my friends and I used to hang out in the woods behind our houses, playing manhunt and things like that. Yet when the first game system came out, I saw a drastic change in our hang-out patterns. As more and more people got video games, we started to spend less and less time outside. Then, when we got into higher grades we had to spend more time doing our homework. Eventually the only time we spent outside was during sports practices and around the swimming pool. This decline in outdoor activities is sad. Eventually, camping and hiking will be a long forgotten memory. And, according to many ecologists, this is part of the reason we are experiencing global climate changes. Many of us no longer understand nature, and therefore have no connection to it. How can we protect something that we know nothing about?

When Headphones Annoy

You know what really annoys me? When people wear headphones and listen to their iPod ALL the time. I see more and more people wearing headphones everywhere they go. I see people wearing them when tehy are walking from one class to another. That is ok I guess, I mean if you want to go deaf by age 30. But what really annoys me is when you are talking to someone and they have one headphone on (or somtimes both) and are talking to you at the same time. You can't honestly keep up a conversation with someone while listening to 50 cent. I mean, what happend to common courtesy? There are som things that you just don't do around people. You don't chew with your mouth open, you don't spit in the street and you don't listen to your iPod and talk to someone at the same time. What is the world coming to?

Money in Blogging

I keep hearing about these idiots who are making a lot of money by blogging. I went onto BusinessWeek.com to check it out for myself. Some of these people started blogs just to talk about themselves and their boring lives and are now rolling in dough. Others have essentially made "Stalker.com" blogs where they chronicle every waking moment of stupid celebrities and their dysfunctional lives. Well, I thought to myself, after reading about these fools who have made up to a million dollars a year blogging, I have one question: Where the heck is my money? Some of these blogs have THEE WORST grammar I have ever seen, and most can barely put a proper sentence together. Others fill their blogs with useless images of cats and other things like that. I don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but at least I can write a proper sentence with adequate grammar. Yet I have not made a single penny in my blogging experience. Maybe if I start rumaging through the garbage cans of this year's B-list celebrities and post my findings online or put up stupid pictures of my family doing absolutely nothing, maybe then I can make some money. Then again, if that's what it takes to make a buck in this business, then maybe I'm not cut out for it.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/07/0714_bloggers/index_01.htm

CCTV...INNIT

Recently we talked about how our attention span in reading has gone down due to technology. Because of this fact I will try not to make my post too long. CCTV is a big part of life in London. Everywhere you look there is a camera looking down to see exactly what you are doing. People say London is the most watched city in the world. If there are so many cameras in this city, why do so many criminals get off without getting caught? People around me are always getting mugged, and in the paper you constantly hear about some poor kid getting stabbed to death. Why are these people not getting caught? If there are so many cameras here why are there so many criminals roaming the streets? You would think the Metro Police would be able to catch most of these criminals because of the cameras. Yet, in the paper, after I read about that 14-year old getting stab, I am told that the assailant was not apprehended (and probably will never be caught). You would this with all this advanced security technology crime would go down in a city like London. However, according to recent data, crime has in fact gone up in our fair city. Where is technology when you really need it?

Technology in the Classroom

I keep talking about technology and how it influences so many aspects of our lives, yet a managed to overlook the classroom. We spend such big parts of our lives in the classroom yet I never realized how much we use technology. I remember when chalk boards and textbooks were the only things teachers used to teach. I rememeber when they introduced those huge light projectors which you could only use that see through paper to write on. Then they introduced TV's into some classrooms so we could watch videos on them. Now they have high tech projectors in every room with surround sound speakers. We can see anything from power points to internet videos on these projectors. Many classes use online textbooks now and even the chalkboard has been replaced. All my teahers use expo marker boards and I now see more and more teachers using smart boards. Its crazy how when I was in 2nd grade chalk boards were the only piece of equipment used by teachers. Now they have everything under the sun to help them teach. And the funny thing is, most students don't think twice when something is displayed on a the projector rather than it being written down on the board.

Halloween

Well it's Halloween again. I love this holiday. When I was little I loved Halloween because you could get free candy. Now I love it because you can dress up as anything and you can see others dress up even more ridiculously. Surprisingly, though, technology has not really invaded Halloween costumes. Costumes are a pretty big deal here, but when I lived in the states that had HUGE stores that were devoted only to Halloween costumes. The weird thing is, however, that the method for picking costumes is pretty much the same as when I was a little kid. You go to PartyCity or whatever, look at the huge board of costumes then hope that the one you want is not sold out. Now, obviously, you can go online and find a costume, but the process is pretty much the same. The only place I saw technology invade Halloween was when I saw someone dressed as an iPod. Yet even this costume was hand made with cardboard. Hopefully we will be able to continue this tradition of having cool, non-technology costumes for
Halloween. Happy Halloween everyone!

Music

Even music has become more technologically advanced. It seems that at more and more parties people are listening to techno music. I am assuming that the word techno has something to do with technology. Don't get me wrong, I really like techno music, but it seems like even this facet of my like is being taken over by technology. I realized this when one of my friends showed me a techno song he made. It was very good and I asked how he made it, to which he replied "computer, course." Wow, I thought, even music could be made using the computer, very good music at that. Sometimes I wish I had the computer skills to make music like that. But its great that I don't have to wait months to hear a good new song, I can just get one from my friend. I only have to wait one afternoon. DJ'ing, which is how a lot of techno music is made, is now done on computers as well. Its great and you can hear a lot of great new music as well. People can now even mix up two really good songs on the computer and come up with an even better one. Computers have done wonders for techno music.

Cell Phones

Cell phones have become the norm. Everywhere you go all people have one. Young or old, rich or poor, almost everyone has one. It's amazing though how much cell phones have changed. I go my first cell phone when I was in 8th grade. For the time it was pretty up-to-date. It had a camera, color screen, and bluetooth capability. I am now a senior and have an iPhone. I barely know half the things my phone can do. And, when i begin to figure out some of the features, Apple makes ten more features I have to figure out how to use. My dad told me about the first cell phones and when he got one. He said the first cell phones were big and bulky, about the size of a military grade walkie-talkie. There was no screen, only a small display where you could type in the numbers. They had horrible reception and almost no one had a cell phone. This was between the 80's and 90's. No cell phones can do everything under the sun. Besides unlimted calling and texting features most phones have internet access. Many phones, now, are just as good, if not better, than a computer. I see people writing emails, checking their facebook, even doing their taxes on their phones. Maybe not doing their taxes yet, but I'm sure that will happen in the near future. Cell phones can also be used to replace an iPod or a digital movie player. Everything you could want is on there. And now that prices are lower than ever, almost anyone can afford a good cellphone. I think all the features available are cool, yet it seems that everyone is so engrossed in their cell phones. You could be having a conversation with someone, and right tehre in front of you that person will be on their cell phone having a conversation with three other people. I find that a bit ridiculous. Soon we will have video chat on our cell phones, many nokia phones are already equipped with video camera for this. I wonder how that will turn out...

Blackberrys? Hate 'em

Yeah, just now I couldn't figure out how to copy and paste something on another persons blog. Technology and I are an epic fail.
But lets talk about Blackberrys. I really hate them. Everyone has them. People always come to me and ask me what my bbm pin is. When i tell them I don't have a Blackberry they look at me like I'm and alien or something. I'm sure I wouldn't hate them so much if everyone didn't have them. Come to think of it I might, just might, consider getting one if only one or two people i know have them (that brick breaker game is unreal). But why does everyone feel the need to get one? iPhones are obviously superior, and, at least in the UK, services are pretty much the same, so what is the great incentive to get one? What can you do on a Blackberry that you cannot do on an iPhone? bbm? If you honestly got a Blackberry because of bbm, then I just lost a lot of respect for you. Basically, if you are planning to get a Blackberry, don't get one. It's a waste. Trust me.

Technology Blogging?

I'm quite bad at using technology. Posting to forums, downloading things, its all another language to me. The most I really use the computer for is to write essays, check emails, and download movies and music. To old people this may seem like a lot of use of technology, yet to the people of my generation, it is a drop in the ocean. I know people who build websites and design programs with ease, while I am sitting in front of a computer screen struggling to figure out how to turn on Garage Band.
Almost all aspects of our lives involve technology. Even acts as rudimentary as walking somewhere can encompass a world of technology. People all around me use iPhones and GPS's to find their way around a city. I'll be honest, I have an iPhone and I do use the GPS feature, but whatever happened to using a good old map? In 9th grade my english class read a book about how technology would take over the world. The book was called Fahrenheit 451 and it was written in 1952. Yet the ideas were pretty clear, technology will take over the world, and the take over has already started.