Chad Lieberman
TheTechFire Radio Feature: Project Glass
The Tech Fire’s radio feature discusses Google’s latest prototype, an augmented reality head-mounted display. This new concept is headed up by Google’s X lab where they are rumored to work on futuristic technologies such as self-driving cars, space elevators and other secret projects.
Their latest project, which goes by the name Project Glass has gotten a lot of media attention these days because of its idea to take smartphone technology and turn it into a wearable device.
The project has been in development for two-years by a small team of engineers. The glasses are still in the early hardware and software design stages but, are rumored to have are see-through lens could display everything from text messages to maps to reminders.
They also may be capable of showing video chats, providing turn-by-turn directions, taking photos and recording notes — all through simple voice commands, according to a concept video produced by the company and released on YouTube.
Get Hired Faster: Building a Web Presence
Making yourself standout in a pool of thousands of applicants is especially difficult in today’s economy. Handing out your resume is most likely not enough to even get you in the door. With the intensification of web and social media more employers are looking for digital samples of work, thoughts, and other accomplishments. I wanted to outline some steps you can take to build your personal brand and build a web presence.
1. Building Your Brand: Building your brand is essential for gaining a good reputation. Start by connecting through social media site such as LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. This will help increase your visibility on the web and help you easily be more found.
- Post content related to your career goals and things you find interesting, not content related to how messed up you were this weekend.
- Connect with people in your industry to ask questions and networking opportunities. Most connections and opportunities are based off referrals today, and it’s import to expand your network.
- Interact on company websites you want to work for. Like them, share their posts, and comment on topics you find interesting. This helps establish credibility and might get you noticed.
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Facebook’s IPO Maybe the Largest in Tech History
The largest social networking site in the world, Facebook became one step closer to becoming a publicly traded company. Founded in 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, the website now has over 850 million monthly active users.
Zuckerberg, who passed off offers from Yahoo for 1 billion and Microsoft for 15 billion, can look back at his decisions to pass up such large sums of money, and see how good of a choice he has made. Some say the IPO could raise around 5 to 10 billion dollars, while the market capitalization (total value of the tradable shares) could reach anywhere between 75 and 100 billion dollars. With Zuck owning around 28% percent of Facebook, you can do the math.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) & What it All Means
There major buzz around the internet this month is the new bill called the, “Stop Online Piracy Act” which will go through the House of Representatives next month. If passed, the bill would basically allow Internet Service Providers to block certain domains if they are hosting content that infringes copyright. This fight is a huge deal, a war waging between everyday businesses, website owners, and users with the entertainment industry and big media companies, and even worse The GOVERNMENT.
The bills goal is to stop online piracy and to protect copyrights but, to what and who’s expense. The line is a thin line to be crossed, with seems to no middle ground being able to be reached.
Can you shut down a website for hosting or people uploading illegal content? The fight is targeted at foreign websites who specifically steal online content and profit from it. A lot of opponents say this won’t come without consequences though. Can you shut down sites like YouTube, which its users post infringing copyright material?
Planned Obsolescence
Have you ever bought an iPod and found out a month later that they are releasing a new one with some fancy new features, a new color, or design? I’m sure this has happened to most of us, and man is it upsetting. The idea of “Planned Obsolescence” is when a company deliberately plans or designs a product to have a limited life, so it will become obsolete after a certain period of time. Guess what happens after that? You go out out and buy a new one. Not only does this relate to product design and features but, also hardware and functionality. Apple has consistently been one of the most successful at planned obsolescence but, is it a good business strategy or evil ploy to have consumers keep buying your products.
Technological Singularity
Have you ever seen I-Robot? Do you ever think about what will happen with the world when we actually create technology that is smarter than human intelligence? The topic of technological singularity describes a point in the future where technologies such as artificial intelligence, will become so smart that it can actually redefine itself. The singularity institute describes it this way,
“Human intelligence is the foundation of human technology; all technology is ultimately the product of intelligence. If technology can turn around and enhance intelligence, this closes the loop, creating a positive feedback effect. Smarter minds will be more effective at building still smarter minds. This loop appears most clearly in the example of an Artificial Intelligence improving its own source code”
Social Netwoking Site for Online Tutoring Prepares to Launch Beta Release
TutorUniverse.net is a social learning platform that connects teachers and students from all around the world. Composed of three major components: free market for student and tutor matchmaking, social networking platform for leveraging group collaboration, and an integrated marketplace for buying and selling educational products and services.
Initially inspired by founders, Thomas Hornbeck, Hung Tran, John Garber, and Jim Cremer while working as teaching assistants in the Computer Science department at The University of Iowa, they discovered there were few tools currently available to help students in more advanced subjects of their field; and little specialized help available outside of class.
They realized many schools across the country are finding themselves on tighter budgets with increasing student enrollments than there are faculty or office hours to meet all their students’ needs. The solution was simple: to develop an integrated learning platform that could potentially offer both students and tutors a flexible place for them to learn and teach more efficiently and at greater convenience.
Structural Reform: Improving Government Security of Classified Networks & Information
Our Nation’s security depends on the ability to share classified information to authorized users immediately. With this, requires sophisticated measures to prevent vulnerabilities and infiltration’s on our networks. With last years leak of hundreds of sensitive documents by Wikileaks, President Obama has just issued an Executive Order on Oct. 7th to implement a structural reform to ensure responsible sharing and safeguarding classified information.
After the WikiLeaks incident where Army Private, Bradley Manning leaked more than 250,000 confidential State Department cables, video of a deadly U.S. helicopter attack and logs pertaining to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; National Security created a committee to recommend procedures for reducing the risk of breaches of classified information. The goal of the effort was, “to ensure that we provide adequate protections to our classified information while at the same time sharing the information with all who reasonably need it to do their jobs,” the White House said in a statement. In addition to adding an insider threat task force, the order issues five priority areas for prevention:
