How long can you last without you cell phone?

As I mentioned before, technology has been developing very rapidly. To such an extent that it no longer changes our lives, but it controls our lives.
Have you ever asked yourself if you can live without some of the key consumer technologies out there. Such as the television, computer and the mobile devices? For me particularly I found that I am not bound to mobile devices such as the cell phone. I can use it for all types of things calling, texting, browsing the web but I choose not to and the main thing is that I am not tempted too do so. However if you ask me to not use the desktop computer for a week, I will pretend I didn't hear that.
One particular technology which has been proven to be highly addictive is cell phone usage. Recent research has shown that "60-percent of the world's population has a mobile subscription of some kind. That's more than have indoor plumbing. At the current rate of adoption, by the end of next year, 85-percent of the population will have phones." [1] Yes technology has helped in many areas, a key one being medicine, but at what point is technology using us rather than us using technology?

The facts speak for themselves:

"A survey by the phone insurance company "Asurion" found 28-percent of Americans think their cellphone is more helpful in life than their spouse or significant other.

An earlier survey said 22-percent of people would give up their toothbrush for a week before they gave up their phone for a week." [1]



Is TECHNOLOGY controlling you or are YOU controlling technology?

Technology alters our brain for good and bad, explained in general terms.

The science behind technological addiction.

[1]. http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/cellphones-cell-mobile-necessity-can-you-live-without-your-phone-20120209

Apple's Trademark contested

    Companies and business as we all know strive to preserve an image that society can associate to. Whether it is for a line of clothes, brand of perfumes, name of foods it is irrelevant. Business are willing to go a long way to defend their ideas whether they can be expressed in tangible form (e.g. Big Mac sauce) or in intangible ( some specific concept/framework/model). In order to distinguish between "entities" there must be a unique features pertaining to each one. To preserve this uniqueness there are some key legal concepts which allow for this to be attainable: copyright, patent, trademark, trade secrets. If such protections were not in place I believe that the competitive strive in today's economy that drives capitalism will be non-existent.

   Apple Inc. is  a leading company that designs and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. Perhaps most notably  known from devices such as the iPhone, iPod,iPhone and iPad.

    Recently another company based in China, Proview Technology (Shenzhen), which deals with  manufacturing of computer monitors and other media devices. The issue was regarding the iPad device trademark holdings "A Shanghai court ruled against a Chinese company on Thursday in a suit that sought to prevent Apple from selling its popular iPad mobile device in China."

On one side Apple Inc. argues that "...it bought Proview's worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago." On the other hand "Proview Shenzhen claims it still reserves the right to use the trademark on the Chinese mainland." [1]

Who is right and who is wrong? Is this a loop hole in the system?

The progress of the story is that there is no progress " March 22 (Bloomberg) -- Proview International Holdings Ltd.’s Shenzhen unit said talks to arrange settlement negotiations with Apple Inc. regarding the rights to the iPad name in China have stalled." [2]


[1]. http://english.cri.cn/6909/2012/02/23/3124s682895.htm

[2]. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/apple-trademark-dispute-negotiations-are-stalled-proview-says/2012/03/22/gIQAd5IIUS_story.html

Google services combine -> privacy concerns spike. Should you be worried?

Google is an "American multinational Internet and software corporation specialized in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies."¹ One of their search engine locations is at "www.google.com" which ranks number one in the world of estimated percentage of page views.² Google's quarterly revenue is estimated at around 10 billion dollars during the year 2011.³ All in all it is hard to argue that Google does not affect the internet experience of users. Google has had different privacy laws for its numerous services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Google_services). But this has all changed. You may have noticed when you used Google's search engine starting this past January, a notification at the top of its  different service pages about the upcoming changes related to Google's privacy laws. Well, it is a fact now "It combined more than 60 of 70-plus policies into a new main policy⁴", if you don't like it Google suggested: "...the company said if users didn't like their data being combined across services, they could simply stop using those services".⁴

On one side "The company says the changes make it easier for users to see what information the company has collected about them"⁴, but critics on the other hand say "...the new privacy policy gives Google free rein to parse together a user's personal information to find out what she is interested in, who she talks to, where she goes and, basically, who she is."⁴ 

I am inclined to side with the critics. Google now has the ability to use the data gathered from a user's pattern across its services to find out all about there is to him/her(personal preferences, hobbies, interests, i.e. who they are). If you think it was easy to characterize a user by his usage patterns with the previous privacy laws, now it has become a "walk in the park". One area which I am focused on is that placing advertisements relevant to the user's preferences will surely increase the revenue of Google, now that they have the full picture of any of their users. To support its decision with regards to changing the privacy laws Google stated that "...it has cut down on the Google Terms of Service and made them easier to read"⁴

But at what cost?

1 . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google
2.  http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/google.com
3. http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
4. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224820/Google_privacy_change_draws_firestorm_

Extra links:
http://www.theticker.org/mobile/about/2.8220/google-s-new-privacy-policy-is-not-so-private-1.2708120