The iWatch: Where Does it Stand?

It has a "crown" knob to control scrolling and zoom without having to touch the screen, silent pulse notifications, a slate of health and fitness mobile applications and compatibility with Apple's new Apple Pay app, which lets users scan and pay card-free at participating stores. One of the drawbacks is that it has to be connected to the iPhone and comes with a $350 price tag. Some analyst think that it might be able to really shake up the market with smartwatches. Personally, they have been around for a while and it is a matter of people not adopting this technology. I also think that the watch is a solution to a problem that we have not found yet. Accord to several surveys, only about 3% of the population wear watches. Apple is going to do some heavy lifting if they want to get the other people to even think about wearing a watch, let alone getting a smartwatch. What do you think?

Signs To Consider If You Are Thinking of Quitting Your Job

We all come to a point in our lives when we need to re-evaluate where we are headed. Sometimes that includes thinking about changing jobs or even careers and that is never a bad thing. One of the things that you need to consider is if you are feeling bored and uninspired. Are you showing up every morning dragging your feet and just feeling miserable? Do you really want to put up with it for eight hours a day Monday through Friday? Hopefully you have an awesome job with a great paycheck. You probably tolerate fairly well most of your co-workers. But you just don’t belong at the company. Everything is going great but the schedule is not what you want it to be or something just does not jive with your morals or personality, or you do not care for the services of your company. First look to see if you can go to a different department though, there might be more opportunity with the software development team versus the mobile applications. If you keep being passed over for high-profile projects or promotions, then clearly someone up top hasn't realized how talented you are. Instead of wasting your potential at a place where your work isn't acknowledged or respected, find somewhere else where you might thrive.

iPhone 6 Rumors

It is almost that time of the year again....the new iPhone is going to come out in a couple months. There are a lot of rumor surround the new smartphone as far as what sort of specs it is going to have. First of all, it is going to have a larger screen. The market is leaning toward larger screens but the the past iPhones have not been keeping up with that demand. The larger screens are better for photographs and video conferencing and other communication services. Not only will it have a larger screen, it will also be thinner and lighter. As far as the software development goes, it will be a lot better and faster. Laptop Magazine reported that the iPhone 6 will potentially include a 20-nanometer quad-core, 64-bit A8 CPU. This would make it noticeably faster when browsing the Internet, processing graphics and running apps. That all sounds wonderful but we might have to wait a couple weeks longer because of some possible production glitches. That and people mauling each other over the newest shiny toy.

Personal Earbuds

Every person's ear is like a finger print, it is unique and has its own shape. Yet, earbuds are usually made to fit close enough. Wouldn't it be amazing to have your own custom earbuds that are made specially for your ears? This means that they will not be falling out when you are jogging or just using a phone service. Enter OwnPhones. These earbuds are wireless and custom 3D printed just for your ear based off of a scan that you can do with your phones. It is a project on Kickstarter which claims that it will be the best earphone that you have ever worn. The price at this point is about $300. The goal has been reached on Kickstarter and there are already several prototypes. This is just the beginning of 3D printing projects and I am sure that there will be more to come.

Telecommuting: The Benefits

Employees who telecommute can actually save their employers a great deal of money and it can be a win-win situation on both sides. For one thing, according to researchers, workers who telecommute are more likely to work overtime than people that do not. Of course this does not always mean that the productivity will go up. Reduced overhead is an obvious cost-saving opportunity of allowing employees to work from home. The costs that can be reduced or avoided include mortgage or lease, utilities, janitorial services, office supplies, coffee and water expenses, office equipment, furniture and transit subsidies. There are also fewer sick days because telecommuting workers are able to better deal with personal issues such as stress and burnout. Not to mention there will be decreased travel costs for businesses. Using communication services such as VoIP systems and cloud systems, employees can collaborate virtually and decrease the costs of traveling. This might not work for every business, but it is definitely worth a try and a test run.

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?

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.