A Little Printer Takes A Bold Step
Imagine all the Kardashian’s tweets compiled in a neat row next to your coffee every morning?
Now as terrible as that breakfast sounds to me, the idea of a tangible newsreel of your interests just a tap away is intriguing. At a time where everything from fitness plans to designer purses to luxury cars can be digitally tailored to your specific needs, personalization is key to any product.
Little Printer makes the big question ‘what news should I read?’ a whole lot easier.
Little Printer, created by BERG, is a tiny inkless thermal printer that prints your daily RSS feeds from your phone on to paper around the same size as a receipt. You can personalize which updates and news you want to print like personal messages, social networking notifications, pictures, news, anything really, all from your phone.
Microsoft Updates Xbox 360 With New “Metro” Interface
Change has come to the the Xbox 360! That is…in the form of a UI update. The interface that most gamers had been using was known as the NXE or New Xbox Experience. Well, out with the old, and in with the even-newer!
For the uninitiated, this new experience is known as Metro, and has been built around the Kinect, Microsoft’s revolutionary motion-controller, capable of extremely high-accuracy motion detection from the user. The new menu system has undoubtedly been re-designed to fit the likes of the non-gamer, further proving that Microsoft aims to bring its console, as well as ease-of-use, to more than just gamers. The new design takes on a modern, indeed very “Metro” look; simplicity+power at its core.
Navigation is now literally as simple as waving your hand naturally in front of your screen, in order to take you wherever you want to go. The same goes for voice-activated search; say “Bing” or “Xbox”, followed by what you’re looking for…and whoosh, you’re there! Xbox information and other media news is displayed first thing as you boot up your system, as well as music, social applications, and even Bing search, from Microsoft.
Apple & 4G LTE?
Apple? And 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution)? Could it be? That’s what has the rumor mill churning once again, thanks to an unnamed source at Nikkei Business.
With so many high-end LTE Android handsets currently on the market, like the new Droid Bionic and even more recently the RAZR, this could be a very crucial competitive edge for Apple. Though the question arises; how will LTE perform on AT&T’s constantly ridiculed network?
Tablet Trouble
As of today, the new Nook Tablet from Barnes and Noble and Amazon’s tablet the Kindle Fire are available in stores. Except, as far as this Nook user is concerned, there’s only one worth buying.
Both the Android tablets have longer battery life and flash video watching capability. The Nook Tablet comes installed with Netflix and Hulu. Yet, while the Nook Tablet has potentially more storage when you include the potential memory card (48GB), Amazon’s Fire offers much more in terms of design, service, and price.
The Fire’s new design is a complete overhaul from it’s previous model’s look, whereas, the Nook Tablet resembles much of its predecessor the Nook Color. Add that to the fact the Fire comes with Amazon’s already burgeoning app store, movie collection, digital library, and a cloud service allowing you to access your files anywhere, and the Nook’s developing app store begins to look negligible. In addition, the Fire ($199) is a good $50 cheaper than its rival.
However, what seems to be the consensus on the blogosphere is that neither of these Android tablets are anything we haven’t seen before. Actually, the point that makes the Android’s operating system so valuable to the user is the Android marketplace, which isn’t offered on either. Unless, that is, you want to attempt to hack your Kindle Fire, you’re stuck with what each provider offers.
What is interesting is the effect these two soon-to-be popular holiday gifts will have on the elite $500-and-up iPad 2. There is no doubt Apple will milk every penny out of the iPad possible, but take a look at some other Apple products fiscal history.
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.
Sony Hacked! (Again)
Sony is under fire again for a recent breach involving customer information. Sony announced Tuesday that hackers broke into at least 93,000 customer accounts. Although thanks to new security measures, no credit card information was lost.
How was it hacked?
Sony stated that this attack was carried out by hackers collecting account names and passwords of their customers from other websites that were not associated with Sony. Since many people use the same account name and password for multiple sites, logging into Sony’s was easy once they had the information.
Sony’s new Chief of Information Security Officer, Phil Reitinger, made an announcement on Tuesday of the breach on Sony’s Blog. He claimed that the majority of log-in attempts by the hackers failed, although they did manage to sign into 60,000 accounts on the Sony Entertainment Network and the PlayStation Network. Another 33,000 were successful on Sony Online Entertainment.
Project Cauã: Increasing Technology in 2nd and 3rd World Countries
As a new blogger for The Tech Fire, I would like to start out my first post discussing a conference that I had the pleasure of attending last weekend at the University of Illinois. Out of the many interesting presentations I was able to listen in on, the one I found to be the most innovative and world-changing was that of Project Cauã.
Project Cauã is a humanitarian effort to improve living conditions by utilizing open-source technology in Latin American countries. Similar to the nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child, Project Cauã aims to increase the use of technology in 2nd and 3rd world countries in the hope that increasing IT skills will have a positive impact on a country’s education and economy as a whole.
What are the goals of Project Cauã?
