Technology posts

To say social media will be bigger in 2011 is like saying a 5-year-old will be bigger when she’s 6-years-old. It is still in its infancy and while many people are engulfed in some form of social media, there are still billions of people who haven’t been on Facebook or its kind before. As 2010 draws to a close, every website is faced with different questions that they need to answer next year. For some, it’s a matter of turning a good profit. For others, it’s a matter of staying alive to see 2012. Nobody has the luxury of having only one major question to answer, but we’ve selected seven big ones that each must…

Person of the Year is a fairly substantial award given out by TIME magazine annually. Nearing the end of this year, however, the award seemed to be up in the air. Who has managed to accomplish anything significant this year? Julian Assange? Maybe. But there was another, and he had a far more personal impact on the world than anyone else today. It just so happened to be Mark Zuckerberg. The 26-year-old phenom has accomplished more in these past five years than most accomplish in their entire life. Not too bad for someone who, not too long ago, was considered to be a boy filling the shoes of a man. Now he has…

Hybrid vehicle sales account for less than 3 percent of auto sales overall. Despite this surprisingly low figure in the midst of unrelenting buzz, hybrid technology will only become more prevalent over the next couple of years. Evidence of that was on display at the recent 2010 LA Auto Show, where many automakers showed off new hybrids that were destined to reach showrooms in the near future. But consumers aren’t the only ones looking to gain miles per gallon and curb emissions. Even the most unlikely of vehicles benefits from cutting-edge hybrid technology: street sweepers. “A sweeper…

Internet Explorer is a distant memory for anyone who knows what the word “browser” means. Firefox is hanging on by a thread amongst the tech savvy mostly due to its assortment of addons and plugins, but Chrome is climbing fast and will likely eclipse it on most fronts. Is there any room left for Opera? Many who have tried Opera 11 would say, “Yes”. It may just be that good. What’s New? There are several new features added to the newest version. Added safety, integration with search and mail, and visual mouse gestures are nice additions, but it’s in the other two that we see a potential for Opera to distinguish…

May Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, and MyBlogLog rest in peace. You likely won’t be missed, but your collective unrealized potentials will go down in Internet history as examples of how to take greatness and run it into the grave. A leaked screenshot of an all-hands meeting for the Yahoo product team has prompted (confirmed) speculations that many of Yahoo’s products are either being merged or discontinued altogether. This came after a round of layoffs yesterday. Why did these services have to die? In many cases, they were promising from their inception or when they were purchased by Yahoo, and yet here…

Newspapers are not dead, despite every effort by many (including newspaper publishers) to kill them. That may have been the biggest surprise in a recent report by Forrester regarding the way Americans spend their media-consumption time during the last 6 years. For the first time ever, Internet usage equaled television watching with 121% increase since 2005. The numbers may be slightly inaccurate as the increased use of television-based Internet consumption may have confused people. There is a chance that Internet usage exceeded true television watching. Television for its part also saw…

What started as an online diary for lonely people to express their thoughts to nobody in particular (or in some cases, nobody at all) has grown into one of the most powerful aspects of the Internet. For many, it’s where we get our news rather than from mainstream media. For others, it’s become a full-time job that pays the bills through advertising and sponsorships. Some blogs are worth millions. This graphic by Flowtown illustrates a time line of where we’ve been and where we are now. Have bloggers evolved to their ultimate state as alternative journalists, public relations portals for businesses,…

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has been set free on bail by the British courts today. The conditions of his bail were that another hearing would be held on January 11, 2011. The $300,000+ bail was posted with help from many supporters (including several celebrities) who donated the money to have his bail posted. All of this comes at the height of a rape investigation and secret U.S. cables being leaked into the wild. Although there is still some debate about whether Mr. Assange will be charged in the U.S. for allegations of espionage, the Wikileaks founder will surely be happy that he can…

It’s not every day you get to re-imagine what the desktop computer will look like, especially in an age where mobility is taking over. However, courtesy of some brilliant thinkers at the Media Computing Group at Aachen University in Germany, the desktop computer is looking brand-spanking new and totally awesome. It even has a curve to it. It’s called the BendDesk. By utilizing two projectors, three cameras, and a few IR-LEDs, the BendDesk can interpret touch and manipulation on a surface that is reminiscent of a touch-based screen on a desktop operating system. But this one appears to work very…

Social media blackmail. When called anything other than blackmail, it’s something that people normally talk about with a positive sentiment. Ordinary people who get extra “power” by being good at social media making big businesses bend at their wills – it’s the way we want it, “sticking it to The Man.” It’s also something that falls under the category of “what’s wrong with social media in 2011″. First, a brief story: Using “Klout” To Whine And Moan There was a time when ordinary people would have to break the law or win the lottery to get the attention of the masses. Social media has made it possible…