Automated Driving System

Today we have Traffic control systems that help process the flow of traffic to reduce traffic jams and maintain them more efficiently. They do so by controlling stop lights and other traffic control equipment. You may notice this when you approach a light and it turns green very fast.
Based on my experience of being a victim to car accidents, near misses, and being stuck in traffic. I believe an automated car driving system would be beneficial for both traffic and safety. It would be similar to the movie “iRobot”. Cars would be driving themselves by control of a computer. Since everything is maintained and monitored, speed limits could be raised and fewer accidents would occur because people fail to obey traffic laws.
Cars may also be given the choice to drive manually this way as well, since the cars will be monitored it will track and predict moments, letting other cars be aware of what’s to come so they can adjust. This will help reduce accidents and the love of driving out in the open road won’t be lost!
Also since cars will be further computerized you can connect your car to a wireless device such as a Smartphone. From you phone you can tell you car to pick you up. The hassle of walking through a parking lot, or running in and out of the rain to your car will be no more. Or let’s say one of your car’s breaks down and you have another across town, you can tell it to come get you. Controlling your car from your Smartphone or wireless device opens up several new options.
Downsides from this invention would be a risk of a computer glitch and a catastrophic accident occurring. Also taxi drivers and other drivers may lose their jobs. Job loss is something our economy can’t afford. However the computer system that maintains traffic will need to be monitored in case of issues or maintenance. So thousands of new jobs would open, but determining whether the job gain will outweigh job loss would be unpredictable.
Whether or not this system is a good idea, it’s at least something that very interesting enough to give it a try and take the risk.

Being a Kick A** Female Gamer

My first gaming experience was with the original Nintendo and the classic combination game of Super Mario/Duckhunt/Track with the running pad.  It was an experience soon followed up by the first Nintendo Gameboy with black and white graphics.  It was amazing! 

In middle school SEGA was the system to have and Mortal Kombat was the game to play.  I learned then that beating boys was so much fun!  At the time I was almost always the only girl gamer in a room full of boys who thought I was just a harmless little girl.  And I demolished them! 

I also started playing Madden and NBA Jams because talking about games, especially sports games was a great way to meet guys.  I actually learned the rules of football and basketball from playing these games.  Can you tell where my main focus was in school??

Many, many years later I am a mom of two boys, who love to game.  The system of choice for me is the Playstation 3 and yes, still the Nintendo handhelds.  Mario is still one of my favorite casual games and I love playing games with my boys.

Of course gaming has changed quite a bit especially with on-line gaming.  Being able to play with people all over the world is exciting and challenging.  The gaming world is still filled mostly with male gamers.  Most of the best selling games are violent and intense, made more so by testostrone driven gamers.  Call of Duty is the apex of this field.  I usually love playing on-line games, Resistance is one of my favorite series of games.  You get to work together with other gamers and achieve goals, which you supposedly are supposed to do in Call of Duty, but the focus of this game seems to be destroying your opponents games and their self esteem as well.   Being a female gamer is even harder.  First off I always have guys thinking I'm a little boy, secondly when they find out I really am a grown woman I usually get hit on, continuously.  Then if that wasn't bad enough, when I make any mistake at all I am blasted by insults and sexually demeaning remarks.  I love playing with friends, and I love to kill idiots who verbally assult me.  A lot of things have changed since my first gaming experience, but I still love being a Kick A** Female Gamer!

Sports And Social Networks

As a sports fan, I like the know the latest updates about everything from game scores to player stats and sites such as Twitter allow me to do just that. I go to school full time so i'm constantly on Twitter or Facebook trying to see what's happening in the sports world now.

Recently,the NBA resumed play after being in a lockout for nearly 4 months and free agency has opened up which means players are being signed, re-signed, or traded to new teams with new deals. Due to the rules of a lockout, players aren't allowed to communicate with owners or talk to teams about possibly signing with them but due to the late start of the season, teams have been making moves fast to acquire new talent. With social networking,you get the news first. Sometimes even before Television networks such as ESPN. With twitter, I can subscribe to the NBA's official twitter and receive updates whenever breaking news is happening in the NBA. This is great because sometimes we don't have time to sit at home and watch TV so having access to crucial info at the press of a button is fantastic.
There are many other social networks that offer sports news but I feel Twitter is the best one. On Twitter, I can follow my favorite player, my favorite team and be the first to know of any news that breaks on any given day.

iPhone 4S Becomes Second Most Popular Cameraphone on Flickr

Apple's newly launched iPhone 4S has quickly shot up to become the second most popular Cameraphone on Flickr.com. Flickr's Camera Finder page shows graphs of the popularity of both smartphones and Point and Shoot cameras.

The iPhone 4S has beaten out the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and HTC EVO 4G, but still lags behind the original iPhone 4. The iPhone made headlines in 2009 when it became the most popular camera on Flickr, even beating out all dedicated non-smartphone cameras. The iPhone 4S still has a ways to go before dethroning the iPhone 4, which remains the most popular overall camera on Flickr.

The iPhone 4S introduced a number of significant improvements to its camera, drawing praise from many. Recently posted, a comparison of the iPhone 4S camera against several others found the 4S with competitive image quality and the advantage of convenience.

Digital Music and Piracy

Okay, be honest. How many of you have illegally downloaded music or movies? Yes, I’m raising my hand too. I may, on one or two occasions, possibly perhaps kind of downloaded an album or two. I’m not proud of it, but let’s look at music downloads objectively: No need to leave the house, all you need is a computer and a mouse. No need to battle the mall in order to hit FYE in hopes that the CD you want is there. No need to pay big money every time you want to hear a new CD. No need to buy the whole CD when all you want is that one catchy track. Music piracy is a pretty awesome deal, right?

Digital media has made it incredibly easy to gain access to an almost limitless amount of music and movies, and it’s completely changed the way that consumers access entertainment. In order for the artists and production companies to keep up with the shift, they've had to change the way they distribute. The first popular legal alternative to enter the scene was iTunes, which allows users to download a single track or an entire CD for a set price. Now, some artists are even allowing music downloads directly from their websites, allowing for the convenience of online shopping without the legal issues.

The effects of music piracy are widespread. On the cons side, pirates are often facing legal action because of their downloads. Consumers who still go out and purchase hard copy CDs find themselves facing higher prices because of these illegal downloads. Artists lose out on royalties and their reputations when low-quality downloads are spread. Record companies are losing big time, maybe even more than the artists are. They make all of their money off of these sales, and when people don’t pay, record companies don’t profit. And I know we all hate the man, and record companies are widely well known for being manipulative money grabbers, but someone has to get these artists’ music out there.

On the other hand, artists are still making good money, according to Cribs (I’ll admit, in the past I’ve used this show as justification for piracy. Now you may lynch me). Concert sales are up, lesser artists are getting popular faster, and greater musical diversity is becoming the norm for most listeners. Even with the high number of illegal album downloads any artist has, often the exposure itself- illegal or not- is enough to bring sales up in the long run, even for hard copy albums.

Just as CDs killed the cassette, and cassettes killed the 8 track, and 8 tracks killed that funny black disc thingy my generation uses to make a statement (or arts & crafts), so digital music and MP3s are killing CDs. It’s not a secret. Everyone knows it, and consumers are embracing it. So now it’s time for record labels and artists to embrace it too, but spending millions of dollars fighting the shift isn’t going to change the fact that it’s still shifting. Time to rethink the system, guys! Hop on the bandwagon and legally offer more albums digitally, more singles for free, and understand that America’s love affair with music isn’t ending any time soon, which means the money will keep coming in.

Digital Media's impact on News & Politics

I’ve stated before that I am an absolute news junkie, and I find it interesting to study the impact that digital media has on news and politics. I think there are both positives and negatives to a news source that is always connected to everyone and everything.

On one hand, people need to be informed about what’s happening in their city, state, and world, and being able to receive instant alerts on their handheld devices, from their televisions, and even sent to their emails is a fast, low cost way to make sure that news gets heard. Politicians are able to organize their supporters and reach wider audiences than ever before with the help of social networking. Even the definition of news is changing (for the better or worse? Who knows.) How many of you managed to miss the headlines about Jack the cat, lost in the JFK baggage terminal? An entire nation followed the drama and a few of us even sniffled a little bit when he was found dead. Prior to digital media, no one but a small circle of the owner’s friends would have known about the lost cat. Now, information gets re-posted, re-tweeted, and re-blogged so many times that the weight the term “viral” used to have is almost lost. But the good news is that people know what’s happening, from Jack the cat to Occupy Wall Street. Do you remember hearing about the Japanese earthquake? UK riots? Egyptian protests? The death of a terrorist? An erupting volcano in Iceland? A collapsed mine in Chile? Gulmaz, the jailed Afghan rape victim? Or one that’s very near and dear to southern hearts, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill? My point is, when people know what’s going on, masses can unite and actually make a difference. Digital media makes that possible.

On the other hand, it can be hard to know who to trust when you’re listening to, watching, or reading news reports. It seems like every news source has an angle, from CNN to Fox and every other news source. It can be frustrating to find an unbiased and fair network to get information from, and digital media has a lot to do with it. This is especially true when it comes to politics. The term “spin” can be extremely aggravating, when every source has their own agenda and the information that’s fed to the people tuning in is horrifically slanted. Digital media makes it possible for selective reporting to take place, and selective listening as well.

In the end, I think that if we keep our minds open, vary our sources from time to time, and use every ounce of logic and common sense we were given, digital media’s impact on the news and politics can be a wonderful thing.

The Wonderful World of Hootsuite

I have recently begun using Hootsuite.  It is a social media communications dashboard that allows my office to store data and hyperlink on our new Twitter page.  It was developed in 2009 and can be used with the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry or Android mobile devices. 

My exuberance with this product is the ease of use!  After five minutes of training; office staff were posting files and linking to tweets.  Did I mention that it interfaces with Twitter to post your tweet instantaneous with a short url (ow.ly).  Another popular feature is the scheduler, which allows your post to be scheduled for publication weeks in advance.

Hootsuite was chosen because government offices are mandated to respond to public records request.  This storage capacity allows users to immediately provide requested records quickly.

 

The dashboard competes with other major dashboards – Threadsy,  Myweboo, Spredfast, MediaFunnel: Collaborative, CoTweet, Seesmic, Netvibes, TweetDeck and Brizzly.  My personal favorite though is Hootsuite because I use on a daily basis and know it to be user-friendly.