Reading “The Filter Bubble” made me realize how overexposed we are when we are looking at a certain website and how our information can be so easily obtained by third parties. I came across an interesting article, talking about a new privacy protection law President Obama plans to pitch to Congress. He’s urged Congress to consider privacy protections when debating cybersecurity legislation. What caught my eye was that he was recruiting the help of Twitter legal director Nicole Wong, to join the administration as a top privacy advisor. That news has advocates examining Wong’s record, which includes a stint at Google. Wong has been working at Twitter for less than seven months. She moved there from Google, where she worked with that company’s engineers to review new products for copyright and privacy considerations. I think this is a great recruit to help bring a law that is very much needed and that many American are probably not aware about. Privacy is something that we should all be entitled to even in the world wide web. Thoughts?

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/77986.html

Laughing out loud, or lol is probably one of the most popular texted words. We all use it either to end a sentence or to simply just to sound nice. There’s no doubt that the way we text has affected the way we write, it has become such a norm that we unconsciously do it, good thing we have spell check right? But the meaning of “lol” has changed over the years, the way the majority of people use it today, wouldn’t signify amusement the way it it before. For example, you text someone “where are you?” and they text back “studying at the library lol”, how funny is that, really? That is “lol” doesn’t necessarily mean anything but it does something like convey an attitude, of all things its grammar. Of course when we text we never think of use proper grammar but if you really think about “lol” has become a period or a comma.

Like the experts say all languages evolve over time, in the modern technology world we live in do you think “lol” is going to stand or are we going to eventually discard it and another word will take it’s place.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/30/opinion/mcwhorter-lol/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+(RSS%3A+Top+Stories)

Remember when the iPhone 4s came out, one of its innovative attractions was Siri. According to Apple, Siri is the intelligent personal assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. It allows you to use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Siri understands your natural speech, and it asks you questions if it needs more information to complete a task. Along with an extensive marketable campaign, Siri became to many an astounding piece of technology to have on your phone at the time, but after using it a few times it kind of became slow and not as accurate as they made it seem on the commercials, it was a dud. Well that was then, now the competition is giving Siri a run for its money, as of today Google is giving Iphone users the option of a new app called Google Now. Google Now would  serve as the primary service that smartphone users rely on to get everything from weather updates to traffic forecasts. Google Now aspires to play an important role by helping users with daily chores such as looking up information on the Web, handling calendar appointments and managing travel plans, pretty much what Siri does but better. According to analysts, Siri posed as a threat to the Google, the information that Siri provides on common topics like nearby restaurants, sports scores and such reduces the need to use Google as a search engine, with that in mind the people at Google created Google Now. How it works is that the technology taps into Google’s various online services, from Web search to personal Gmail email and Google Calendar entries, to deliver relevant information throughout the day in pop-up windows that Google refers to as “cards.” Maybe this will give Apple an incentive to make some changed to improve Siri and come out with something new. Whether this is better option than Siri or not, it’s up to the public to decide, I know that I barely use the Siri on my phone but maybe I’ll give this new app a try. What do you guys think?

Did you know that the first cell phone call was made 40 years ago.  The first cell phone ever made was in 1984 and it cost about $4,000, it had an LED display and took 10 hours to charge. If you want to try a more vintage look get rid of your iPhone or Android and buy one here.  After people became tired of holding a brick, the next big cellphone invention was the flip phone, described by Motorola as “about as thick as a fat wallet at the earpiece while tapering down to half the thickness of a deck of cards at the mouthpiece.” And who can forget the Nokia ringtone, very well progressed during the years (listen here) a dub step version really? The next big thing after the flip phone was the camera phone, they weren’t sold until the year 2002 in the United States, Sony Ericsson’s T68i with its clip-on camera being amongst the first. Before the IPhone and Blackberry were top sellers, there was another phone that everyone had, I remember I got it as my first phone in pink, the Razr. Motorola’s slender, square Razr series, first launched in 2004, was such a runaway hit and sold 50 million phones in the first two years. After the average cell phone era had its run, the smartphone era took over, BlackBerry’s 5810, was the very first Blackberry device to get a cellular connection. The Palm TreoW, also a pocket assistant, was the first phone to run a Windows mobile operating system. These phones started to smudge the line between computer and phone. Last but not least, in 2007 came something that would reinvent a simple phone, the IPhone, an iPod, phone and internet communicator in one device.  Since then, flat, skinny smartphones from Nokia and Samsung and HTC  have reconfigured our expectations of a smartphone, and they are far from what was the first phone. So what do you think the next phone innovation is going to be? Assuming most of you have smartphones, how has it made your life easier/harder ? Could you live without it?

Facebook was in it prime when most of us were in middle school or highscool, and many of us left MySpace for the newer fad that was Facebook at the time. When talking to younger people I realize how “old” Facebook is becoming much like what MySpace was at our time. They seem to choose Instagram as their social network of choice, which makes sense because if you go to Instagram’s Popular page you’ll see teenage related pictures such as Spongebob “memes” or One Direction pictures. While checking Twitter I saw that many people and some celebrities were posting things on a new social network site called Pheed. Curious to learn more, I googled it and found this article about it. Pheed provides users with a platform for sharing all forms content which includes text, pictures, audio,voice notes, video, and live broadcast. Users can subscribe to other users’ channels and view their subscribed channels’ almost like what you would do in Youtube. Also, they can “love” or “heartache” specific pheeds, hashtag, pheedback as well as share content from other channels to their own via a feature called “remix” similar to a retweet. The app became #1 on the app store and it seems like it’s caught the attention of the demographic that Facebook is losing. It easy to see why people are so attracted to this new site, it has an edgier modern contemporary look and in a way it’s like all top social netwroking sites combined into one. So if you’re sick of the same old Facebook, consider giving Pheed a try.

Do you think this site has potential to have the same popularity as the top dogs of social networking? (ie. Facebook, Twitter)