Author: Brian Wallace

The early 1920s were the years of the one-room schoolhouse. A few years later, in 1923, classrooms began incorporating radios into their lessons. By 1933, 52 percent of schools were using silent films, while three percent were already using films with sound. In 1939, the first TV was used in a classroom. During the 1950s and 60s, headphones and chalkboards began to be used in classrooms. In 1964, BASIC was developed to give students an easy-to-learn programming language. Then, in 1967, the handheld calculator was developed by Texas Instruments. In 1972, Scantrons were first used to automatically…

Drivers are constantly distracted, visually, manually and cognitively. They text, they call, and they adjust their GPS devices, all while driving. Nearly 80% of car crashes in the US are caused by these distracted drivers. While Google Glass is a (mostly) hands-free device with some amazing capabilities specifically designed for the road, how will it affect driver safety in a driver-distracted world? In 2012, cellphone use—especially texting—was responsible for one crash every 24 seconds in America, according to the National Safety Council, which lists three types of driving distractions:…

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is cited as 82% of today’s cloud investments, and is the deployment model for 84% of new applications, so what is SaaS? SaaS is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider, and made available to customers over a network. SaaS provides the most visible value to end users of the cloud models. SalesForce was created in 1999, and was the first SaaS platform built from scratch to achieve rapid growth. The products and services of SalesForce included customer relationship management, the sales cloud, and the service…

Developing smartphone apps is a tough business to break into. Seventy-five percent of apps earn the developer less than 500 dollars per month. Because app markets are saturated, very few apps are able to accumulate many downloads. In fact, only one in six smartphone apps exceed 500 total downloads. Every once in a while, an app is able to break out and find success, gaining high numbers of downloads in a matter of days. For the most successful apps, user numbers lie in the millions and gameplay takes billions of hours from users. What is it that makes these apps, such as Blood Brothers, Minecraft,…

When it comes to point-of-sale, there are a few vulnerabilities that you probably didn’t even know were there. In 2012, the retail industry made up 45 percent of data breach investigations, making it the highest percentage in retail history. E-Commerce sites were the most common target, accounting for 48 percent of all investigations and spanning 29 different countries. Of these attacked businesses, it took 64 percent of them more than 90 days to detect an intrusion. Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to hacking. Sixty-three percent of 2010 cyber attacks were at companies with…

Getting a ticket for speeding is a fear that most drivers face every day. For 16 percent of drivers this year, that fear will become a reality. Of those, only 5 percent of people will not contest their ticket, costing them an average of 150 dollars. While many drivers do get pulled over for speeding, there are others who have learned to avoid the police officer’s radar gun with a device of his or her own — The radar detector. A radar gun uses radio waves to detect distance and speed of objects based on the doppler effect. A radar detector is able to detect these waves before they catch the speeding car. A…

Well, it wasn’t easy, but integrating more technological resources in schools is finally starting to pay off. Eighty-seven percent of parents think that effective implementation of technology is important to their child’s success in school, and 50 percent label it as extremely important. And a respectable 64 percent of parents think their child’s school is doing a good job with incorporating technology into student achievement. Many teachers find the use of technological devices for classroom use beneficial to their lesson planning and sharing information between other teachers. It…

In 2011, robot sales hit about 160,000 units, translating to $8.5 billion in sales—this was by far the highest level recorded for any single year. Employment isn’t for humans only—there are currently 1.1 million working robots in the world. Today, robots sort through construction waste for reusable materials, and the even play a major role in automobile production. In fact, 80 percent of car production is completed by machines. By using artificial intelligence, Hyundai Motors reduced delivery time by 20 percent and increased inventory turns from 3 to 3.4. “Baxter” is a humanoid…

The Internet serves as a hub of the world, providing entertainment, connection, and goods and services. By 2015, online retail is expected to be worth $279 billion. In United States, while Internet is an important resource, it’s not readily accessible to everyone. Ten percent of Americans don’t have access to basic broadband because of where they live and six-tenths of poor people don’t have wired Internet. Much of this has to do with lack of competition between companies that not only allows them to ignore portions of the population, but to also drive up prices without consequence. In this infographic,…

To say that the internet has completely revolutionized the way we communicate with each other would be a serious understatement. People around the world can stay connected in real time through mediums such as Skype and Facebook, and information can be found instantaneously on almost any subject imaginable. No wonder we have so many self proclaimed “experts” out there. Politics has even found its place online. Many protest groups now choose to use Facebook as a means to organize public demonstrations. The Arab Spring protest may be one of the best examples of the Facebook organized demonstration….