February 4, 2012

Technology Slaves

EvilPCIf you are reading this, then there is a really good chance that you are indeed a slave to technology, or at least deeply immersed. Surrounded by lifestyle-altering, digital gadgets, you are embracing technology.

Slave may be too strong a word, but we may be so reliant on our digital devices that our basic behaviors has been permanently changed. We text, we tweet, we chat incessantly on our cellphones in grocery store check-out lines, our kids use calculators for basic math, we eschew libraries for Google, and finally, when was the last time you “looked that up in your Funk and Wagnalls?”

The desire to perform tasks faster, better and more efficiently is pretty basic, and has resulted in some pretty amazing technologies. It’s all good, right?

Technology enables us to be more productive and it can help us focus our talents. But it also allows us to become detached from the world around us – the world where real things live.

Consider the cellphone and its impact on our lives, it goes with you everywhere and you would feel naked without it. This little guy allows you to be a press of a button away from everywhere that you’re not. I love my cellphone, but I don’t want it to rule my life, so I rely on two little bits of technology: Caller ID and Voice Messaging.

Technology to fight technology. Maybe I’m still a slave.

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New Microsoft Courier – Tablet PC or Electronic Organizer?

MS-Courier1Microsoft has been slowly releasing information on an interesting new product, but without a clear picture of its market placement. It looks to be basically a Tablet PC with 2 hinged displays that are multi-touch sensitive and no keyboard.

Some of its features are on display in a recently released video that show its usefulness as an electronic organizer. I have to say that it has a very Apple look to it. The two displays appear as book pages with the spine of the book acting as sort of a clipboard. If this is its primary purpose, I can’t say how I would put it to use.  As a PC, even with advances in handwriting recognition technology, I’m a much faster typist, and would feel burdened without a tactile keyboard.

The code name for this new product is Courier, and understand that it is still in development so nothing is certain, but it still looks extremely appetizing. Further discussion and the just released video clip can be seen at gizmodo.com and crunchgear.com.

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Keeping Up with Technology

For many of us the first exposure to new technology is during the Holiday advertising blitz. Whether it’s some new game console, PC device or household appliance, the first time we hear about this technological achievement is when the product comes to market. The technologies behind these new products are really not new, and in some cases, have been in development for years, and there’s really no trick to staying on top of them.

It used to be that you had to subscribe to many trade publications to keep current, but now you can use technology to stay abreast of technology. By using a relatively simple method, you can have the latest articles and opinions delivered to you for free. The method I’m referring to is called RSS which stands for Real Simple Syndication. In its basic form, RSS allows a user to subscribe to a website’s “feed” which makes the content available to a RSS reader. Many national news sites, mainstream online journals and most Blogs have RSS feeds available that anyone can subscribe to. The hardest part for you is to pick a reader and the feeds you want.

I have tried all of them. I use Google Reader because it is very simple and integrates into my other Google online applications. When I fire up my browser, it automatically loads in a tab as part of my Home Page Tab settings in Internet Explorer 8, so all I have to do is click on the tab and I have new content ready to read.

The best technology-related feeds are:

Once you get up and running with a RSS reader, you can search out feeds in your other interest area. You will be surprised at how much content is available.

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