Friday, June 27, 2014
Energizing Park Benches
I have to say that this is a rather interesting concept as far as remodeling benches and other furniture to keep up with the software development and mobile revolution. This is an idea of a bench that can charge your device through a USB using the energy that it gathers from the solar panel. The first dozen benches will be installed around Boston this month; prototypes had dotted the Boston landscape this winter. Boston residents will be able to find free benches on an interactive map at Soofa.Co. Clicking on a bench brings up information about the temperature, noise, air pollution level, and recent foot traffic around the location, as well as whether a charging port is available. For now, it’s BYO cable if you want to juice up your phone. Future versions of the Soofa, Richter said, will have inductive charging, or the ability to place your device on a surface and have it power up, no cord required. Like I said, it might be an interesting concept but it digs the digital hole just a bit more when what we really need is to be able to unplug. A park bench is the best place to find that quiet solitude without a digital device. Do you think we are taking one step forward or back?
Thursday, June 12, 2014
The Global Internet and Language
When mail and communication services such as telegraphs came onto the scene, the world shrunk significantly. We were now able to communicate with anyone in the world in a reasonable amount of time. This meant that information and stories were able to shared with much more ease as well as languages. Flash forward to the twenty first century and we have the internet which made the world the size of a block. You can now message people or even use internet phone services to see them as if they were sitting right there next to you. We have instant access to people and hordes of information. Though, it seems like the information is not used all that much but that is a completely different story which I may get into later. With more people being online, it is becoming more important to break down language barriers. The way to do that is for people to either learn the other languages or have the computer programs translate what the other person is saying. Skype, the internet phone company has finally ventured out into the territory of translating what the other person is saying over the internet phone. It is looking like the improvements are making it much more seamless and pretty soon language difficulties and barriers will be a thing of the past.
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