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Summer Sale Madness!
June, July and August are typically quiet months for us (Maybe you too?).
So it’s a great time to do IT work while people are away.
Office moves, upgrades and updates, hardware refresh, training etc.
Book in a project (Anything not IT Support) over the summer months and recieve an additional 20% discount.
Call 020 3031 4734 or email eric@theengineroom.co.uk
(NB: August is now pretty much booked but July still has some out of hours slots available.)
Could Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube be our new professors?
Set the scene
You’re in a café with a friend and he/she asks a question that neither of you know the answer to. You both have a burning desire to solve the mystery, but what do you do!?
Back in the day
Not so long ago, we would have either decide to agree on a conclusion, we would maybe ask a third party or if there were none to be found call that ‘super geek – all intelligent’ friend, we all have at least one! Assuming of course that they are not too busy creating the next Appleor Microsoft! (love you Dan!).
Do I hear bells ringing, sound familiar? Well, as you know, this has changed somewhat….
Throughout the last century traditional education systems have gone through many developments especially in the last decade or two. I’m sure you too remember sitting in a room facing a blackboard whilst being professed to by a teacher. We would sit there and learn from this educator, often and aged lady with a name like Ms Primbottom. I remember mine oh so well, she wore thick glasses, her face was embellished with a frighteningly sharp nose and she possessed gravity defying skill and aim with a chalk duster! Shudder!
Ms Primbottom would regurgitate Shakespeare, spell out the alphabet, she would attempt to get calculus across and show the exciting points in physics, ahem! Despite her best efforts Ms Primbottom would more than likely be faced with a fairly ambivalent and uninterested class who’s attention was drawn to writing notes and drawing pictures of ‘Spotty Megan’ kissing ‘Edmund the nerd’.
This educator is who we relied on, our main source of new information – other than the dusty books in the library which let’s face it, didn’t get visited often by most!
Today
The internet has changed this, it challenges opinions, allows for free expression, it is available 24 hours a day, it is social and you will be hard pressed to find a topic that has not been discussed, researched and understood thoroughly. All we have to do is whip out our Blackberry, iphoneor laptop, open a Google page and voila! The answer is ours within a few convenient seconds – or possibly minutes if like me you have a blackberry ;o).
Is the internet becoming the lecturer or merely a resource that aids the existing ones? Will the future have CP30 and R2D2 standing in front of a class projecting YouTube videos of Hamlet and chatting in real time to people on Twitter or Facebook about Einstein’s incredible discoveries? It’s quite an amusing image, uh oh, premonitions of the Matrix creeping in……..
via: <a href=”http://www.onlineeducation.net/“> OnlineEducation.net</a>
Geosocial Universe 2011
- Mobile: 5.3 billion mobile devices are used worldwide — that’s 77 percent of the world’s population
- Smartphones: 21.8 percent of all mobile devices are smartphones. Despite what one might think, Apple does not top the list in sales—Nokia does
- Skype: Mobile usage continues to increase thanks to Skype’s wise investment in apps and its mobile platform
- Facebook: Now tops 629 million registered users with almost 250 million people accessing the site via mobile
- Qzone: China’s version of Facebook, Qzone, is experiencing supernova-like growth with 480 million registered users
- Twitter: Broke the 200 million registered user mark with nearly 40 percent of people tweeting via mobile
- Email: Hotmail still dominates email, but Gmail is gaining fast
- Yelp: Yelp is topping 50 million unique visitors per month. Its move to team up with OpenTable earlier this year will only increase its relevancy
- Foursquare and Gowalla: These geosocial specialists are still growing, but growth seems to be slowing down a bit
Future of computers: blue skies and the occasional cloud
Let’s set the scene. Its 1958, a cold stormy night in a large warehouse belonging to Texas Instruments, USA. The light flickers as Jack Kilby bends low over two transistors on his laden work bench. With a final spark from his soldering iron, the first integrated circuit (IC) is born. Kilby’s discovery is the basis for all computers today, so you see that stormy evening in 1958 was quite important really, not just for Kilby but for us all!
The twentieth century saw incredible advancements in man’s innovative and life changing inventions. The Industrial revolution brought massive increase in production and the use of various new materials, this sparked and enabled Kilby’s discovery.
It was the dedication of all those men and women with a deep excitement toward routing information through complicated arrangements of wires that we find ourselves where we are. These brave and brainy geeks perpetuated the technological evolution of computers to what we use today as an integral part of our daily lives.
What happens when we reach the limits of our technology? It is coming and it will happen… the silicon chip can only go so far. Beyond that, computers processing abilities will be compromised – what will be the answer then……fibre optics, kryptonite…..warp drives?
The world we live within today is increasingly become more and more reliant on technologies. Many of these are becoming exterior of our physicality. What I mean to say is, what we now have in the same room as us our ‘towers’ and/or processing stacks will be no more. Computers will become a tool, an access point that allows you to ‘plug in’ to what used to be your tower which will now be floating somewhere out there in the cloud….Google….Microsoft…..
Technology is moving toward the ethereal. It cannot be touched, it cannot be seen, but it does the same and more than what we have at present…… where will it all end up..…..?
[source: OnlineComputerScienceDegree.com]
Office health: Bum deal
Do you have a job or hobby that requires you to sit for many hours of the day or night for that matter? If so, this is for you!!
The facts
As a species we spend more time sitting on our behinds than we do sleeping! The average time for ones bum to frequent a chair is 9.3 hours per day, this may be at the office or at home on the couch, whereas the average time spent in bed sleeping for most is 7.5 hours – pretty crazy huh!
Back in the day when we were out farming potatoes, chasing sheep around the hills and tackling stormy seas for a wee fish or two our biological fitness, in comparison to today, was far greater!
Scary stats
Since the arrival and integration of technologies in our daily lives we seem to make more use of our bums than ever before!! It really has become a bit of a problem. Below are some eye opening stats for you to mull over:
- 1 in 3 Americans are obese
- Between 1980 and 2000 exercise rates stayed the same, sitting increased 8% and get this, obesity DOUBLED!!!!!!
- Those who sit for more than 3 ½ hours per day watching TV are 64% more likely to die from heart disease.
- All you folks out there that have jobs that require you to sit for long periods have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease as compared to those with standing jobs.
- As soon as you plonk your bum down calorie burning drops by 1 per minute
The solution
The human body is not designed to sit for extended periods of time so here are some links to exercises for you to do in the office that whilst may have some eyes looking at you will potentially lessen your apparently ensuing threat of cardiovascular disease.
Why not get the whole office involved, afternoon stretches – I can imagine it now, offices all over the world in unison doing synchronised office gymnastics :)
With some simple activities we can all live with healthy bodies, minds and keep our office jobs! Good luck my fellow geeks!
Ever heard of ‘stand up desks’? Todd Wasserman swears by them, find out more here.
Move aside Facebook and Google: Microsoft is eyeing up Skype
www.skype.com
Today the rumours floating around are that Microsoft are close to clinching the acquisition of Skype! With a price tag in the ballpark of $7 – $8.5 billion it would be the biggest acquisition the Redmond company has ever undertaken.
Facebook was reportedly offering between $3 and $4 billion to get their hands on this VoIP giant! However, it would seem Microsoft have snuck in to steal the deal. They appear to be the most likely ones to walk away ‘one VoIP service richer’. In order to do so they have bid a whopping great figure, too whopping perhaps?
We are all watching perched on the edge of our chairs. What do you think about Microsoft’s potential purchase?
Google TV’s fate: Are we going to have to ‘Wave’ goodbye??
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http://bit.ly/k0rSiy
http://bit.ly/j92GDw
For those out there that didn’t know, Logitech partnered with Google in an exciting partnership aimed at bringing us all Google TV. It was announced this week that Logitech’s operating income was a mere $3.6 million, not quite the whopping $24.5 million it made a year ago. However they have had a sales increase of 4% compared to last year (2010). Interesting stuff huh……
Logitech’s income missed the mark largely due to its investment in Google TV, which was revealed in dramatic fashion at last year’s Google I/O developer conference. Logitech developed the revenue, a $299 Google TV-powered set-top box (compared to Apple TV at $100).
Users complained about a complicated user experience and an array of bugs. Google delivered an update last month to fix some of these problems. But, was it too late – had they already lost the faith of many a customer….?
Google and its partners are far from giving up on their TV project. For one thing, there isn’t one major rival dominating the space. Connected TVs were a hot ticket at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but the market is young and there isn’t a clear winner yet.
So what might Google be able to do to lift Google TV sales and save it from Google Wave’s fate?
Regardless of the strategy, it is apparent that if Google can’t get its TV engine roaring soon, partners and developers may start abandoning the platform — and there is no recovering from that!!
What do you think – if you were Google what would your next movement be? As a potential, or existing, customer why choose Google TV over say, Apple TV ?
Another question to get the old grey matter sizzling – What would you do if you were in Logitech’s shoes…..???