Month: January 2013

Touch-Screen Laptops To Become The Norm & The Rumored Apple TV And Why It Just Might Change The Way We Watch TV For The Better

Linda Reimer

Touch-Screen Laptops To Become The Norm: CNET has an interesting article on their website that discusses why Touch-Screen computers will become the norm in the near future. A driving factor in this drastic change for personal computing is in large part going to be foster by Intel the renowned chip maker. During the Intel keynote address at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show last week Intel spokesmen stated that all its new chips would be created to be used with touch-screens which of course means if PC manufacturers want to use those chips – they’ll have to start producing touch-screen laptops and desk tops.

Here’s the link to a CNET article on the subject titled CES Postscript The Touch Laptop Like It Or Not:

http://ces.cnet.com/8301-34435_1-57563657/ces-postscript-the-touch-laptop-like-it-or-not/

The Rumored Apple TV And Why It Just Might Change The Way We Watch TV For The Better: While I was reading the tech news this morning I came across an article that offers insight as to why the current way we watch television belongs back in the original age of I Love Lucy. And with that point in mind, why Apple just might revolutionize the way we watch TV in the near future if they are indeed, as is widely rumored, working on a new television system. The speculation is that this new hypothetical (at least at the present time) Apple TV system will allow people to easily search for TV shows and movies and access them on demand; and then bring them up and watch them all by voice activated commands – making the whole searching for and watching TV shows and movies process a much simpler one – not to mention a more 21st century one. Here’s the link to the article titled Apple Will Revolutionize TV And Here’s How

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1108741-apple-will-revolutionize-tv-and-here-s-how

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Babiak, John. (2013, January 14). Apple Will Revolutionize TV And Here’s How. SeekingAlpha. Onlne.

Crothers, Brooke. (2013, January 12). CES postscript: The touch laptop, like it or not. CNET. Online.

Corning’s Willow Glass

Linda Reimer

Living and working in Corning, NY I am, not surprisingly, a big fan of Corning (meaning the company and not the city — although I am a big fan of the City of Corning too!); and of course, Corning makes Gorilla Glass which is used as screen glass for many tech devices due to its durability. And now Corning has a new kind of glass — it is called Willow glass and it is flexible — it is the next high tech type of glass because you can roll it up like a newspaper!

So here’s a link to a CNET article that discusses, and shows a demonstration video of, this new glass (filmed at the 2013 CES in Las Vegas):

http://ces.cnet.com/8301-34447_1-57563367/hands-on-with-cornings-bendable-willow-glass-exclusive/

Have a great weekend!

Linda R.

References

Dolcourt, Jessica. (2013, January 10). Hands-on with Corning’s bendable Willow glass (exclusive). CNET. Online. 

 

Two Cool Articles That Discuss How Technology Is Expected To Further Transform Our Lives In The Next Few Years

Linda Reimer

I came across two cool articles yesterday that discuss how technology is expected to further transform our lives in the next few years. The first article is from NPR and focuses on Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek’s plan to walk the route scientists believe our human ancestors took thousands of years ago when they walked out of Africa and migrated northward and eastward. Salopek believes he’ll gain a view into how technology is transforming people lives and connecting them on a global level. And the second article, from the New York Times, features an interview with Ben Horowitz the co-founder of the Silicon Valley capital venture firm Andreessen Horowitz who shares a bit of tech insider insight into how he believes technology, in this case software, is transforming the lives of people around the world.

Here is the link to the NPR Paul Salopek article titled What Do You Pack For A Seven-Year Trip?

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/10/168961210/what-do-you-pack-for-a-seven-year-trip

And here is the link to the NYT interview with Ben Horowitz:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/ben-horowitz-on-the-impact-of-software-everywhere/

Have a great weekend everyone!

Linda R.

References

Hardy, Quentin. (2013, January 10). Ben Horowitz on the Impact of Software Everywhere.

NPR Staff. (2013, January 10.) What Do You Pack For A Seven-Year Trip? NPR. Online. 

Amazon Offers Free MP3s To CD Buyers, Kindle Touch Software Update & Why Power Outlets Are Different In Different Countries

Linda Reimer

Amazon Offers Free MP3s To CD Buyers:  Amazon has just introduced a new service called “Auto-Rip” which offers music fans that purchase designated CDs from Amazon to receive both a CD and an MP3 version of the same album*. So if you still have a CD player in your car you can now buy a new CD from Amazon on your smart phone or tablet and immediately access the MP3 version of the album and listen to it on your smart phone or tablet while waiting for the CD to arrive in the mail.

There are a number of articles to be found online today regarding this new service. Here’s a link to a  PaidContent article on the subject titled Amazon gives free digital album to anyone who buys the CD:

http://paidcontent.org/2013/01/10/amazon-gives-free-digital-album-to-anyone-who-buys-the-cd/

And here’s a link to the Amazon Music page which allows you to hear all about this new service from the horse’s mouth as the expression goes!

http://goo.gl/o9C1X

Kindle Touch Software Update: Amazon has also just issued a software update for its Kindle Touch series of touch screen e-readers. The update offers Kindle Touch owners a bunch of new features including a new and improved user interface and Whispersync for Voice. Here’s a link to an Engadget article on the subject titled Kindle Touch updated with new UI, Whispersync for Voice and comic book navigation:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/10/kindle-touch-updated-with-new-ui-whipersync-for-voice-and-comic/

And if you are wondering – “What on Earth is Whispersynch for Voice anyway?” – here’s a link to a page on the Amazon site that offers an in-depth explanation of the term – and the cliff notes version is if you own a Kindle and download the Audible app (Amazon owns the Audible audio book company) than you can switch between reading an e-book version and listening to an audio book version of the same book.

Why Power Outlets Are Different In Different Countries: The Gizmodo tech site is offering readers a cool article with a bit of history to it! The article discusses the reasons why, as the article states “Why Power Outlets Look So Weird in Other Countries” (of course people who live in other countries can say the same thing about the power outlets in the United States); basically you have to go back to the dawn of the age of electricity when you had inventors,  scientists and industrialists like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse coming up with and promoting competing HZ electric frequency standards – and long story short – the electric standards were not standardized internationally – the U.S. selected one frequency and other western countries other frequencies so in essence today there is no international standard HZ frequency  for electricity; hence electric outlets look different in other countries. Here’s the link to the articles which offers a more in-depth explanation of the subject:

http://gizmodo.com/5972640/why-power-outlets-look-so-weird-in-other-countries

Have a great day!

Linda R.

*The new Amazon Auto Rip service includes qualifying CDs Amazon customers have already purchased so you may be able to access songs you purchased from Amazon years ago and download them to your PC, tablet or smart phone.

References

Buckley, Sean. (2013, January 10). Kindle Touch updated with new UI, Whispersync for Voice and comic book navigation. Engadget. Online.

Roberts, Jeff John. (2013, January 10). Amazon gives free digital album to anyone who buys the CD. PaidContent. Online

Tarantola, Andrew. (2013, January 8). Why Power Outlets Look So Weird in Other Countries. Gizmodo. Online. 

Dewey Decimal Number for International Cook Books

Linda Reimer

ImageThe Dewey Decimal System number for cooking (generally speaking) is 641.5. And as you browse through the shelves in that section you’ll find more books that focus on various aspects of cooking. For example, the books labeled 641.55 cover “Money-saving and timesaving cooking” (OCLC, 2003) and the books labeled 641.52 to 641.54 deal with “Cooking with specific fuels, appliances, utensils;” (OCLC, 2003) all of which is very interesting if you like to cook! However, my favorite Dewey Decimal System number for cooking is 641.59 because the books that feature spine labels with that number fall under the category of international cooking. So if you’re looking for recipes and/or cook books that feature French, British, Polish, Italian, Brazilian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and South African cooking then 641.59 is your number!

And of course what this has to do with tech is very simply the fact that you can look up cook books (and all other library materials) and request them in the library catalog which is called StarCat. To request an item, either one that is checked out or one that is on a shelf at a library within the Southern Tier Library System, you simply click on the word “Hold” found on the item record and you’ll then be prompted to enter your library card number (the long number on the back of your library card without any spaces) and your PIN number (the last four digits of your telephone number) and that is it! The item will then be requested and you’ll either be sent an email notification when the library item has been pulled from the shelves and is available for you to pick up (if we have an email addresses on file for you) or you’ll receive a telephone call notifying you that the item you requested is ready to be picked up.

Here’s the link for StarCat which may also be accessed by going to the library’s home page – SSCLIBRARY.ORG – and clicking on the Library Catalog link at the top of the page.

http://enterprise.stls.org/client/default

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

The Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index. (2003). OCLC Online Computer Library Center. Dublin, Ohio.

*Our library, the Southeast Steuben County Library, is a member of the Southern Tier Library System – also known as STLS for short. And patrons of all the member libraries in the system (which consists of all the public libraries in Steuben, Chemung, Yates, Schuler and Alleghany counties) can request items from all the libraries within the system. So if that book you want to read is only owned by The Wide Awake Library in Fillmore, NY, which is located in the north western corner of Alleghany County – you can request it and have it sent to our library where you can much more easily pick it up than you could if you had to drive to Fillmore to retrieve it!

Glow In The Dark Smart Highways & CES 2013

Linda Reimer

Glow In The Dark Smart Highways: We’ve all heard of smart phones and smart TVs but I must admit I’ve never considered the idea of “smart highways” before now!

However, they are coming!

And what a cool idea! Imagine roads that help us stay safe because they are smart. In the Netherlands and other parts of the world the high tech evolution of roads is unfolding – and they are indeed going to become smart! 

And you might well be wondering “How on Earth are roads and highways going to become smart?” And the answer to that is a multi-faceted one! The roads and highways are being made smart by the utilization of smart glow in the dark paint (picture the lines on all roads glowing the dark so they can be very easily seen), Dynamic Paint (this paint will change color by temperature so if it is cold enough to freeze you might see snowflake symbols appear on the road, roads that have built in anti-icing features (so the roads simply won’t freeze) and roads that have lights that automatically turn on and off by sensing the presence of cars on the road. I’ve noticed several articles online in the last two weeks that have offered information on the number of ways highways and roads will become smart in the near future. The most detailed one I’ve found is on the Atlantic website and is titled 9 Technologies for Building the ‘Road of the Future’ – here’s the link:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/12/9-technologies-building-road-future/4219/

CES 2013: CES stands for the Consumer Electronics Show. And this annual event has tech companies showing off their high tech wares and upcoming products so it is always interesting to check out the articles and news stories about the show which kicks off on January 8. This years’ show is expected to highlight the evolution of television, the interconnectivity of gadgets, appliances and other items (imagine a refrigerator that notes when the milk has gone sour and sends a message to your smart phone…), smart cars and an increasing number of inexpensive tablets with more bells, whistles and bang for your bucks! Here’s the link to a CNN article on the subject tilted Six gadget trends to look for at CES:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/04/tech/innovation/ces-preview-trends/

References

Kelly, Heather. (2013. January 4). Six gadget trends to look for at CES. CNN. Online.

Metcalfe, John. (2012. December 20). 9 Technologies for Building the ‘Road of the Future’. The Atlantic. Online.

 

 

Ten Tech Blunders To Avoid In The New Year

Linda Reimer

The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog has a fun article on the WJS website titled Tech Blunders To Avoid in 2013. The author, Theresa Poletti, offers a combination of fun insights and tech etiquette tips. She notes that our society has gone from the personal era of the personal computer to what futurist Paul Saffo recently described as the “intimate” era of smartphones and 24/7/365 connectability  – an era that allows us to carry access to the internet in our pockets and share every little detail of our lives with others whenever we are inspired to do so. And she humorously describes all the photos of food that people post online as “Food Porn,” insists that people don’t need to share their location or their tastes in music with the entire online universe and that we should all remember that if we want information kept private we should not post it on our Facebook or Twitter accounts (Just ask Randi Zuckerberg about that one!).

Here’s the link to the article:

http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-12-20/commentary/35923435_1_social-media-etiquette-photos

And just FYI should you have missed the online flap during the busy holiday season Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, posted a photo of her family during a holiday gathering on Facebook with the intent that it should just go to her friends but she didn’t quite get the Facebook settings just right and one of her sister’s friends shared the photo with thousands of other people and it was then shared by more people and more people and…you get the idea! And Randi Zucerkberg wasn’t pleased to say the least! Here’s a link to a Gizmodo article on that subject (which just goes to show the common sense rule of thumb is that you don’t share anything online, and I do mean anything, that you don’t want everyone else in the universe to see):

http://gizmodo.com/5971918/watch-randi-zuckerberg-have-a-facebook-freakout-over-her-photo-going-viral

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Biddle, Sam. (2012. December 28). Watch Randi Zuckerberg Have a Facebook Freakout Over Her Photo Going Viral. Gizmondo. Online.

Poletti, Theresa. (2012. December 20.) 10 Tech Blunders to Avoid in 2013. Wall Street Journal: Market Watch. Online.