Texting Appliances

How would like to text your fridge or even send an internet fax to the TV? Yes we are one step closer to making our homes smarter. LG Electronics has unveiled a virtual assistant service that lets customers text their wireless home appliances through the messaging service LINE; the appliances made by LG will be enabled with its new, HomeChat technology. The devices including fridges and televisions will use natural language processing to understand commands or status-update requests that owners sent to them through LINE, the one of the world’s biggest messaging platform with more than 310 million registered users and counting. The service rolls out in 2014 with LG’s range of smart vacuums, ovens and fridges and other appliances, LG’s chief technology officer, Scott Ahn, announced the service at the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday. Are these smart appliances really solving a certain problem or just a novelty? For example, Users could also send a text to the HOM-BOT asking “When did you last clean?” to which it might reply, ”10:50 started cleaning with zigzag mode; 11:30 completed cleaning with zigzag mode,” according to LG. Text “What are you doing?” to the LG washing machine and it should reply with details on where it is in the wash cycle. This made me chuckle a bit.

Big Data

Last week in Barcelona, Huffington announced a visionary partnership with Hewlett Packard (HP) called HP Earth Insights. This program will revolutionize the way we monitor, report and understand the health of ecosystems. Environmental scientists across the globe will be able to put their field research findings into mobile HP tablets through communication applications and analyze and share that data in visual, user-friendly dashboards that reveal tropical changes in near real-time. HP Earth Insights will help us link tropical forest data with other data repositories at the Smithsonian Institution and Wildlife Conservation Society, and connect the dots to further populate a measure of tropical forest biodiversity known as the Wildlife Picture Index. Before this program, there was a significant lag between the collection of data and the publication of it where more data is collected. The ability to quickly synthesize the telltale signs of ecosystem decline -- and getting that information into the hands of leaders in time for them to make informed decisions -- has become a priority for CI and its partners. This is why the HP Earth Insights partnership is so ground-breaking.

Tracking

Do you like being tracked online? I am sure that you all have heard all the horror stories about how much money these companies are making off of the information that they have about you and even your family. To be perfectly honest, it is a tad bit annoying when you are online and the ads that you see which can get a bit pushy sometimes are related to what you are searching for. The one thing that you have to remember that there is no way to get around being tracked. It will always happen, whether you are using email or internet fax or just trolling around the web. Third-party tracking is where the questionable practices come in, but even those practices have some upsides. If you are tracked by your preferred retailer, you may start seeing ads for products you may actually be interested in. You may get deals or sales in ads directed toward you. Less spammy and more personalized advertisements may make you despise that drop-down advertisement a little less, especially if it is something you’re inclined to look into further. As good as that sounds, there is no real line that is drawn as to where it stops.

Your Mind On the Internet

We email. We tweet. We facebook. We google. In this incredible age of technology, our computers sometimes seem to have taken control over our everyday lives -- from how we buy groceries to how we find mates. How is all this screen time affecting our brains? Is it getting rewired and changed at the molecular level? MRI research has shown that the brains of Internet users who have trouble controlling their craving to be constantly plugged-in exhibit changes similar to those seen in people addicted to drugs and alcohol. A 2011 study showed that unplugging from technology for one day gave some users, usually gamers, physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. There could also be something called Facebook depression. Do you get down when you see pictures of other vacationing or their achievements? Video conferencing also open a bee nest in itself. On the other hand, there is plenty of research out there that supports the idea that computers might actually boost brain function. Clearly, the internet has not been around long enough yet for any conclusions.

Your Smartphone: A Perfect Target

Your smartphone is almost always on, connected to the Internet, logged into your email and social media, and likely has at least a username stored for your bank account. Your smartphone contains as much sensitive information as your wallet does — more, if you count the contact information for your family and friends. Smartphones can access the Internet, which puts them at risk for a variety of malware and compromising exploits, but malware can come via almost any phone function or phone service. Text messages are easily exploitable, especially since an average text-messaging app takes no security precautions. The take home message here is to make sure that you have the right type of antivirus software and to use some common sense if you see something suspicious.

Give These Up and Be Happy

Happiness is something that we all strive for or at least attempt to. Aristotle said that it happens when we do what is morally right. Others say that it is a choice. Does it sometime seem like an extremely hard choice to make? We complicate our live so much that we would not know what happiness looked like if it came up close enough to examine our tonsils. There are however ways to fight through the fogginess of our daily lives which are bogged down with emails, voicemails, and tons of internet fax. So here are tow reasons for giving up what others think of you: You'll never please everyone and it's none of your business what others think of you. Next, let go of insecurity and stop taking everything so personally. No one really cares or watches you that closely. And the truth is, most people are too consumed with their own life to really consider what you're doing. Lastly, Anger burns a hole in the hand of the person still holding on to it.

How To Use The Internet

If you came across a book with that title, would you read it? In May of 1994, computer-book publisher Ziff-Davis Press released Mark Butler’s How to Use the Internet. Have you ever heard of it or seen it in the stores? This was way before the time of website development and apps. Here are some of the things that you can find in the book. We have certainly come a long way:

Joining mailing lists: “Although it is polite to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to a human, do not include these words in the messages you send to a listserv. They may confuse the machine.”

Newsgroups: “Remember, a news reader is a program that enables you to read your news.”

Online etiquette: “Flaming is generally frowned upon because it generates lots of articles that very few people want to read and wastes Usenet resources.”

“Surfing” the Internet: “Surfing the Internet is a lot like channel surfing on your cable television. You have no idea what is on or even what you want to watch.”

Searching the Internet: “If a particular search yields a null result set, check carefully for typing errors in your search text. The computer will not correct your spelling, and transposed letters can be difficult to spot.”