Polaroid 300

If you are a fan of photography or have been a fan of Polaroids film you will be pleased to hear that they have made a come back. They teamed up with fujifilm to create a new and improved product using the same instant photo product. This article was a review about the new camera and how the author Linne Ourads felt about the idea of the Polaroid camera.

Creative Flash!

The Creative Flash article is so informative on the different ways to improve the flash when photographing. It taught me about narrowing the flash with a snoot. It informed me on how to soften a flash using a soft box or umbrella. It also showed me what tools I could use to project a flash to farther distances. And lastly is taught me ways to give photographs a cool edge using a ring flash. These things are great to know if you are planning a trip and are sick of plain flat pictures!

Commenting

So how do you guys like commenting like this?

Welcome To The Blogosphere!

I have just finished reading “Welcome To The Blogosphere” By Blaine Flamig. This article explained how blogging started off, and where it is in our present day. Blogging first began in the late 1900’s as public diaries that people could comment on. Present day blogs now consist of many topics, such as politics, entertainment, and many other such topics. In fact, we have a blog here for CIT’s seniors! Microblogging is another way to blog, and this is when you blog in smaller bursts than whole paragraphs. In fact, Twitter is the classic example of microblogging. Blogging has become more popular since the smartphone and the iphone started going online, because not people can blog from their phones. People can also get paid for blogging, by advertising for companies on your blog. Google’s Blogger is free, and you can make a decent blog on there with ease, so I recommend it for anyone who wants to make a blog. I personally love blogging, and I hope more people get into it.

Put your business on Facebook

If you are looking for a way to promote your business, Facebook is the way to go. I read about how useful Facebook has become to a business. It helps you advertise, promote, and show details about your business online. There is so many active users on Facebook, so once you create a page about your business, someone is bound to see it. If I had a business I would definitely create a Facebook page to help boost my number of customers. The article taught me how to actually go about starting an official page. If you do have a page make sure you always keep it updated for your clients. Make it so your viewers keep coming back to the page. Also, you can check your progress on your company based on likes, comments, and posts. Facebook in my opinion, is one of the best social networking sites out there now.

Windows 7 Ultimate

Today, I read the article "Windows 7 Ultimate" by Carol Holzberg. The article is about the new Windows 7 upgrade costing $40 pertaining mostly to students and teachers. The upgrade is much fast than Windows Vista but looks very similar to it. This will make it easier to get used to the new upgrade rather than being confused. They have new features for locking icons to the taskbar, and even ones to make computer use better for people with special needs. There's no easy way to upgrade from XP because you must clean your system to use it before hand. Programs like Movie Maker and Photo Story have problems running and installing now though on the new operating system. Windows 7's upgrade seems to be a easily adaptable OS.

Protect Your Password

Today, I read the article "Protect Your Password" by Seth Colaner in the August 2010 edition of Smart Computing. The article entails exactly what the title describes, how to protect your passwords and how to do it efficiently. The article's author recommends the program RoboForm, a safe and efficient program that allows you to protect your internet gold. The author clearly advertises the features of the program allowing you to create a master password for the sites you visit and a user name that will be stored in the program for later use. When you log in to say a banking site, the program allows you to pick from a list of websites you have saved for user name and password and presto! The program allows you to insert a preset user name and password without having to type it into the insert box. The program also allows you to create identity information and insert it into any set of insert box. I would use this program, if I was a paranoid banker with millions of dollars riding through all sorts of banks throughout the country. Otherwise, in my personal opinion it's overkill.

Skype For Your Office

This article was about how Skype could save you some money on your phone bill. It told you how to set up your phone and hook it up to your router so you can make calls through the internet. Skype to Skype calls are completely free and the only time you have to pay is when you make an out of Skype call. However, there is an upside to this as well. Because Skype makes calls via the internet there are no long distance charges. The only problem is when there is heavy Internet traffic and you might have to deal with delays or dropped calls. However, this can be fixed with options like “traffic shaping” and “automatic uplink speed” which will allow Skype extra bandwidth when needed. Overall Skype is a great investment with great benefits that will save money on your monthly phone bill.

Andrew Felker

Jobs for Renewing America

This article was about how now that the economy is starting to recover there are going to be more job opportunities. These are mainly in Education, Health Care, and Infrastructure. There are going to be more and more teachers needed in the future so that means more jobs. In Health Care there are going to be more jobs now that coverage has expanded. Now that people have to have insurance that will mean a lot more people will be needed for the increased demand. America's Infrastructure is falling apart. It hasn't been fixed in decades and is in need of a serious overhaul. Other nations put ours to shame. People are going to be needed to perform this overhaul. We need to get high speed rails and smart power grids. Overall I thought this was a pretty good and informative article. It gave me an idea of what the job market of the near future will look like.

iPad: Road Test

Road Test is an article written by Pam Derringer to inform educators of new strategies for K-12 leaders. The article focuses on the Apple iPad becoming the most efficient tool of the time to use in schools. Lighter than a laptop, but with a bigger screen than a BlackBerry, the iPad is an ideal technological advancement.

According to the article, "The iPad opens the door for two things: collecting classroom observations and checking off teacher behavior". Miguel Guhlin, a technology director in the San Antonio region, is an advocate for the use of this new technology. He believes that using the iPad is an efficient way to gather information on individual students by combining many sources into a single source. The iPad allows this to happen.

The future of education is believed to incorporate the use of technology into everyday learning. Guhlin anticipates that, further down the road, "Simple, affordable videoconferencing equipment will enable administrators to converse with one another and/or broadcast on the fly". He also notes that smaller districts are often more open to innovating technology than larger districts, where "deployments cost more and more stakeholders weigh in on the proposals". Lastly, Guhlin states: " We want to support teachers but hold them accountable". This infers that schools will give their teachers more and more tools to educate their students, with the idea that the success of these students is dependent on the teachers' use of these tools. Technology is the future of education.

The Mac Is Back

In this article Seth Colaner talks about Apples latest releases,the new MacBook Air, Mac OS X Lion, and the Mac App Store. the new MacBook Air took all the technology from the IPad and put it in a very non-conventional notebook. The MacBook Air is only .68" thick due to the absence of a normal hard-drive and battery. The MacBook Air takes advantage of the flash memory in the IPad but in a "flash chip" form so that they can be spread out thinly and in more ares to allow for a thinner design and more space for the battery. With the increase of size the new batteries can last up to five hours for the 11" and 7 hours for the 13" and like the IPad's there is no "boot time" the laptop will start right up no waiting.
In addition to this Mac also unveiled its Mac OS X (version 10.7) Lion, which incorperates some of Apples latest elements of the IPad and Iphone including "Mission Control" which is a birds eye view of what is running on the computer. The best feature of the new OS is the Mac App Store which is all apps for the Mac computer, making it easier to attain programs that you want. All in all Apples latest advances are mind blowing and continue to change the way we use computers.

TouchSmart PCs Put the Power in your Fingers

This article was in the December 2009 issue of Smart Computing & Consumer Electronics. The article was about the new HP TouchSmart computer. This computer lets you pinch, rotate, arc, flick, or press and drag items on the touch screen, or you can just use a traditional mouse and keyboard. These computers are self-standing that lets them easily stand on a kitchen counter, in a living room, or on a desk. The base model has a 23-inch 1080p widescreen display with adjustable base, Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB hard drive, and Nvidia GeForce G200 integrated graphics. In 2009 this computer was the new and coolest device out there.

EINSTRUCTION MOBI

The EINSTRUCTION MOBI is the new innovated way to use a whiteboard. It is an interactive whiteboard. The device is great for student to teacher interactions it allows the students answer to be directed to the teacher’s main device through what is called KWIK (Know What I Know). It also interacts with PowerPoint presentations. Nine EINSTRUCTION MOBIs can be used at one time. It’s a fun and unique way to whiteboard.

Seven reasons i really dislike public education reform.

Dr. Jim Taylor says he’s not a fan of the Obama administrations ‘public education initiatives’. His reason being they’re ‘mislabeled, misdirected, and misguided’ so the article he wrote listed seven reasons why and he expressed furthers on each of them making valid points in my opinion. The first reason he gave was public reform was dishonest; his reason for saying it was not all schools were in trouble just mostly inner cities and the rural south. A lot of money is being wasted with the rest of the schools says Dr. Taylor.  Then he says we must do it the right way, stop going down the same path and doing everything the same way every time. Things must be changed! Schools are teaching the normal things like math, but leaving out arts and physical, social sciences and humanities. To Dr. Taylor that’s taking the joy out of teaching and making learning stink. Fourth reason he gave was cheating was encouraged, the reason being you need accomplishments in schools to get more money and power. Fifth reason, teachers are seen as the problem, when they’re just the first symptom. The problem is before school, where the kids life and the learning they can take in. Sixth reason is the local control, local school boards say they know the best way to educate children but Dr. Taylor says this would be true about a half centenary ago. Lastly, he explains that the root cause is missed, if you fix the schools you fix the students? No, the solution is to change the environment in which disadvantage children are raised in. That’s the overview of the article, and if you’re wondering Dr. Jim Taylor has a Ph.D. in psychology and is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco.

You can follow up on more of his blogging on some of these websites: psychologytoday.com, huffingtonpost.com, sfgate.com and seattlepi.com.

The Simple Naked Truth

This article written by Liz Davis in Success Magazine in April 2010. It's about Patrick Lencioni's latest book, Getting Naked. In the article it talks about different main points that are in his book like risking the business, entering the danger, the naked leader, the functional team, and keeping it simple. In Patrick's book he talks about how you should deal with clients. Also what to do and what not to do when trying to keep business with clients. If I were I to business I would definitely purchase this book, Patrick seems like a very intelligent man and he knows what he's talking about

Video Monitoring System

The article talks about the basic necessity of making sure that were ever you are your home and personal belongings are safe. If something happens you can catch the person stealing or destroying them and they won’t get away. It also states that you can have nanny cam or a camera in every inch of your house for safety reasons. You could work from home and want to make sure the children are ok and not doing anything that could possibly harm them and that camera can save their lives. There are many needs for a security camera. You have to consider the options of a wireless system or a wired one? There are many things you need to consider when looking at video cameras for safety. Some questions would be what do you need them for? How many do you need? Where are they going to be put, inside or outside of the house? Do you need color, or can you survive with black and white? Based on those questions that you would have to answer, you can now make further decisions about what to get. There are many different types of monitoring Systems out there in the world today. Some examples would be “Logitech ALERT 750e Outdoor Master System” which is $349.99 on www.logitech.com. This security system is made for outdoor video monitoring. The other security system is the “Avaak Vue Personal Video Network” its $299.99 on www.vuezone.com.

Google & Beyond

The article Google and Beyond by Joanna Safford from the Smart Computing & Consumer Electronics magazine talks about how Google is the most commonly used search engine. She has a point because when people want you to look something up, a lot of people just say "Google it". In the article she mentions some other search engines like Cuil, Yahoo, Ask, Katapulco, and Dogpile. She mentions the difference between those search engines and google. In the article she mentions some websites that are alternate search engines that are used for searching for a subject within limited Topical engine. Some examples she mentioned are Tunefind that is used for finding songs that were on movies or tv shows, Quotiki that is used to find clever quotes, and WhatsOpen is used to search for cities for local business hours of operation. This article mentioned some really interesting search engines I've never used before, you should try to check them out!

Leading the Way in Classroom Transformation

The article that I read was all about how teachers around the world that use SMART products actually help them transform learning. Teachers around the world believe that not only does the white board make it easy to create extraordinary moments but, it helps students succeed. In this article it explained about why educators should choose SMART products. Since they have invented the interactive whiteboards about 20 years ago they have grown into a company over 1,300 staff members. SMART believes that their interactive whiteboards are very helpful in engaging your students by making their learning more interesting. At Bristol-Plymouth every classroom has a SMART board and they are actually easier to learn from than just regular white boards. I agree with this article that the SMART boards help engage students in their work. SMART has many other products that will help teachers not only just teach to a big group but they even have products that help them teach students individually. SMART boards also help students be more excited in going up to the board and trying to answer a problem.