This week, we're honoring the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, an important lesson that humanity recieved that even our most "modern" technological advances are no match for nature. No ship is unsinkable, and no technology is infallible.
I live in Oklahoma, which is part of what is known as "tornado alley." People here have been dealing with this phenomenon for as long as there have been people here. My grandparents headed for the cellar (which did dual duty as a storm shelter and a place to store jars of fruit and vegetable preserves) as soon as the sky clouded up. This happened a lot, and they kept the place stocked for overnight stays. Because we're so close to the water line here, and technology has given us monster-sized refrigerators and freezers, most people have traded in their in-ground cellars for a "safe room" in their house. A safe room can be a room that is built specifically for storm protection (basically the equivalent of the black box on airplanes) - these are expensive. Most of us have opted to simply find "safer" rooms, which are rooms in our homes which don't have windows - as close the interior of the house as possible.
Knowing exactly when to get into that safe (or safer) room is the tricky part, of course. For a lot of us, the safer room is our bathroom, and you can really only spend so many hours in there without losing your mind. And, of course, it's tempting to want to go outside and watch or photo the spectacular funnel clouds. The most dangerous time is late at night, when people are sleeping.
For this, many of us have gone from depending on radios, to TVs and now our mobile devices. There are also sirens in many neighborhoods, which have been successful in waking people up to alert them to move to a safe or safer room. Unfortunately, in Woodward, OK, last night, those sirens failed due to a lightening strike and then the sirens were hit with a tornado. Tragically, there were injuries and fatalities in those tornados, and the siren failure is believed to have contributed to the toll.
In my neighborhood, I'm usually not able to hear the sirens, so I don't rely on them. I've come to rely on my mobile phone. The tornados did not hit in my city last night, but if they had, I might have been in trouble. I forgot that I had turned the notification signal down a couple of days before while I was in a meeting. When I received the tornado alert in the early hours of the morning on my cell phone, it didn't make a loud enough sound to wake me up, and I slept right through it.
No matter how great our technology is, we need to always remember to have a life boat - or a back-up. It's an important lesson to learn and never forget.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the tornados - those who have lost family, and those whose homes have been destroyed.
In a super-sized world, it is refreshing to find people who know how to put a lot of value into a little bit of space. As someone who currently lives comfortably in a 550 square-foot apartment, and once used my car as an office for about 18 months, this "smoffice" (small office) project really speaks to me. Unfortunately, I don't want to move to Durham, so I won't be entering this particular competition, but this is a good opportunity to ask, just how much office space do we REALLY need?
Room to entertain clients. If entertaining clients is part of your job, ask yourself if it is truly beneficial for those clients to meet you in your office? For example, if you're an interior decorator, and use your office as a show room, then the answer is obviously yes. But in many industries, it's more common to meet clients on a job site, or at a coffee shop, in a restaurant, or in a cafe like the one shown in the video above. If you generally meet your clients in public places, it might make more sense to reallocate a good portion of your office real-estate budget to entertainment costs.
File storage. Do you really need to keep a massive amount of paper files or manuals or books? Maybe you do, and if so, then you'll definitely want a climate-controlled, secure space for those files with easy access. Increasingly, however, in most industries, it is more convenient to store files electronically. It's easier to share and update them in electronic format - particularly if your clients and/or colleagues are in other locations. Explore whether taking time to scan and digitize those archives might significantly reduce the amount of commercial property you need to lease or buy for your office space.
Ergonomic comfort. This is a big one, and the reason my brilliant office-in-my-car idea eventually fell to the wayside. If you're going to be sitting and working for long periods of time, you really do need to protect your back, legs, arms, neck, and eyes. You need room to stretch, and a place to go for a walk. No matter how big or small your office space is, make sure you have a chair that is adjustable to the right height, a keyboard and monitor that are appropriate for the amount of time you're spending on the computer, and a desk that allows you to reach your phone, computer, and files without reaching or stretching into positions that could pull a muscle or cause you to fall out of your chair, or crack a shin open on an inconvenient corner.
Light. Again, the importance of good lighting cannot be stressed enough. Whether you have natural light or not, you'll need to make sure the indoor light is bright and comfortable for night-time or cloudy days. Remember, light does not take up any space, so you can afford to splurge on it.
Equipment. Think about all of the equipment you really need to operate efficiently. If you need a copier and printer, be sure to make room for one. You'll probably need a desk and/or table of some sort at a minimum. Even if you have digitized your files, you'll probably need SOME sort of paper or file storage, so make room for that as appropriate. You need enough electric plug-ins to charge and power each of your devices - computer, phone, printer/copier, etc.. If you find you're using any of your equipment less than once a week, you might consider whether it is worth it to simply use the services of a local library or print shop, rather than maintaining and storing the equipment yourself.
So, how much office space do you really need? Are you ready to try a smoffice?
Anyone who grew up dreaming of having a Jetson's food machine or Jean Luc's replicator will love this story.
I've been exploring virtual worlds like Second Life and InWorldz lately, and one of the basics of building and creating in those worlds is learning to work with "objects," which are usually things like houses, clothing or avatar parts. These objects can be transferred between the virtual worlds by downloading and uploading these objects as XHTML files, much the same way data from websites are often backed-up and/or moved from one site to another.
These objects are visually 3D, which means that you can rotate them to see all sides, and that they have the appearance of being "real" when displayed using an appropriate viewer for each respective virtual world.
Well, a site called "The Pirate Bay" made big news this week when it announced it was adding a new download category called "Physibles." The Pirate Bay is a website that allows users to download computer programs and other media for free. The site is based in Sweden, and many of the downloads most likely violate copyright laws in the United States and other countries, which is why I'm not linking to them here, but you can read the report on just about any Tech News site listed HERE in the Googe Search.
Apparently, these techie-trend watchers believe that the future of illegal downloads is in 3D printing.
What?!
That's right - they believe that basically, you will actually be able to download physical objects, and they want some of that action. Well, I do, too. Not the illegal part, but wouldn't it be fun to be able to buy a book online, and then download the physical book instead of just a file for your iPad (which I don't have)? Or speaking of that, maybe I could just download an entire iPad.
"...Riley and Vernon are eighth graders. Along with a small cohort of classmates at Discovery Charter School in the Bay Area, they’re already getting pretty deep into the world of 3D design and printing. After Riley developed a strong interest and aptitude for 3D printing a couple of years ago, a company called 3D Systems donated a 3D printer worth several hundred dollars for him to use at school.
The class of some dozen students is one a very small number of middle school labs beginning to delve into the emerging industry. The group’s work has been featured in a Popular Science blog post, and they have already produced items including dice, jewelry and replacement parts for the printer. Their progress reflects a tangible future for the medium that exists outside of exclusive laboratories and research facilities....(more)"
Wow! Those kids are cute. And smart. And they'll be running the world when I'm too old to do anything about it, so I'm glad that they seem bent on using their powers for good.
I don't know who this handsome young Japanese business man is, but he got his 15 minute of fame this week after a photo of him went viral. In the photo, he's using the latest free wi-fi-service...from a soft drink vending machine!
I got this link from a member of our Coca-Cola collector's club on Facebook, who was asking when Coca-Cola would get this technology. If this pilot program in Japan works, it probably won't be long. The company that is testing the program is Asahi Soft Drinks Co. Ltd, and the machine is able to handle 3G, WiFi or Wimax connections for up to 30 minutes, and up to 50 meters away.
Of course, the machines also still dispense drinks, and run ads when no one is using the w-fi. The real test will come when people begin to catch onto the fact that these hot-spots are available, and begin competing for the connection. There may also be security concerns, which will need to be worked out, with so many customers using the same hot spot within a relatively small space (similar to the concerns present at any publicly-accessible hot spot).
And then, of course, there are always unintended consequences. For example, will there be pedestrian or even vehicle traffic congestion around these new hot spots, which could potentially become more of a nuisance than they're worth?
Still, the technology is brilliant, and my guess is that these machines will quickly find their way into airports worldwide, then into malls and service stations and public event venues. They are already paid for by advertising on the machine. As they become more popular, they will likely be able to also include advertising on the customer's phone to keep the service free and/or a premium version that would get rid of the ads.
If this technology becomes mainstream, expect any business which includes public machines or kiosks in their marketing program to start looking to see if including mobile hot spots in their vendors is a good option. Soon, " free wi-fi" signs might be just about as common as "ATM" signs. After all, you can't stop progress. Happy New Year, everyone!
Well, it's that time again. It's the end of one year, and the beginning of another. A few years ago, I made a New Year's resolution to stop making New Year's resolutions, and that is the only New Year's resolution I ever kept.
There are a lot of predictions for 2012. I'm sure you have heard about the Mayan one prophesying the end of the world in 2012. I guess if that one comes true, the rest of this won't matter, anyway. 2012 is also shaping up to be an important election year in the United States, and there are a lot of predictions about who will be the next U.S. President. I'm going to let someone else go out on that limb.
There are also a lot of predictions about what will happen with technology and social networking in 2012, and I'm going to jump into the fun on that one. Now, keep in mind, these predictions are from someone who enjoys watching social networking trends - namely, me. So, if I'm wrong, please don't blame Tim and the rest of the gang at WebRevelation. Of course, if I turn out to be right, you can give him a little credit for hiring such an insightful social networking guru. Ha!
Anyway, these are a few things I expect to see happen in the world of social networking in 2012.
"Google Plus" will find a niche market, and remain largely insignificant to most of the world. While I like a lot of the things the folks at Google do, their social networking attempts just keep falling flat. They really aren't offering anything new, or of enough significant value to make most of us want to drag our network of friends over to Google. Also, they have been so callous and blatant in manicuring their user base for aggressive marketing, that it's making a lot of folks nervous for privacy and security reasons.
YouTube will continue to grow and prosper. Although I haven't been impressed with Google's social networking attempts, I really do like what they've done with YouTube over the last few years. They've recently made some changes that have made the site even more user friendly, and are quickly establishing themselves as THE place to be for anyone wanting to share visual media, including already famous and aspiring performing artists. I fully expect that site to continue to grow and prosper throughout 2012.
Facebook will become the foundation, rather than just the destination, for social networking. Facebook and Google both have taken advantage of a very unique time in world history, when technology companies were allowed to develop with relatively little regulation. That window of opportunity is closing fast (partially because these two industry giants went too far with their liberties), so it is unlikely that any other company will be able to match their success. Facebook has successfully integrated with nearly every other major social networking, technology, and shopping site out there, and is quickly establishing itself as a foundation, rather than just as a place to go to network. Don't be surprised if by the end of 2012, to "facebook" something is simply a generic verb for sharing information online, whether or not the "Facebook" site is actually involved in the transaction.
Twitter will find a way to make a profit, and continue to establish itself as the go-to place for breaking news. Twitter posts are already quoted regularly on the major news networks as "candid" responses from the general public to breaking news events. I fully expect within the next year or two to see either a Twitter Cable TV channel similar to the weather station or a more mainstream-looking presentation of the popular Twitter posts to appear on a view-only news site. My only hope is that Twitter finds a way to do this with private, rather than public funds, to keep its uncensored man-on-the street feel that makes it unique from all of the other news outlets, including the citizen-journo sites.
We suggested last week that if you're planning to buy a computer, you might want to wait about six months, due to an expected hard drive shortage caused by the floods in Thailand.
Well, now it seems that right now might be a good time to buy, after all, if extended warranties are important to you. Several news outlets are reporting that two major hard drive manufacturers, Seagate and Western Digital, are cutting their warranties from up to five years to about one year.
As The Verge points out, this isn't the first time this has happened. It happened about ten years ago, and the warranty periods have crept back up. Neowin explains that external hard drives (such as thumb drives) will not be affected by the change.
Honestly, this isn't as big of a problem has it sounds like for most people. Five years is a really long time for a computer in today's world. I'm doing really very well to get mine to last three or four years, and most of the problems that happen after the first year are from damage, not defect. Yes, uber-techies (people who know a lot about computers sometimes make a game out of seeing how long they can get their hard drives to last, but know how to fix the common problems that most of us do not. Besides, the first thing uber-techies do when they get a new computer is start reconfiguring their hard drives, which voids any warranty, anyway.
Still, this is something to consider. If you feel better about having that warranty as a back-up, purchasing that computer before the end of the year might be a good idea.
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