Project Ara

The cell phone industry has been making great head ways in the past 8 years to bring us smarter and smarter phones that can do more and more. But one thing they have made little to no innovations in is customization. As a consumer the only real way I can customize my phone is typically on the software side in picking which launcher to use or what app to download. On the hardware side there are even less options, the ones mainly being able to pick how much memory you get between predesignated amounts or putting a case on your phone to make your Iphone seem different then the next persons.
Well now we have a project Ara. A project being spearheaded by Motorola, it calls for the full modularization of cell phones so that the consumer can swap out different modules as they see fit. It is a brilliant idea, making the cell phone completely customizable from battery size to camera quality even to screen size, the possibilities could be endless.
I recently signed up to take part in project Ara. I along with the others who signed up will be tasked with "missions" that will basically be about the project they are working on. The user with the most active account at the end along with a few other users who accounts are also very active will receive a modular phone free of charge to test out.
Once I receive my first mission I will post it here. But until then stay tuned.

Here are some useful articles so that you can no more about what Project Ara is!

Project Ara (official site)
The Verge on Project Ara
Gizmodo on Project Ara + Comments

Why Be Me when I Can Be Anyone! Essay 1

Essay

In today’s world you can be anyone you really want to be. People do it all the time. They go onto to their favorite social media site, create a new person and BAM! They are whoever they want to be. I have not personally taken part in this but they have made an entire tv show called Catfish just to reveal people who have been doing this.

Social Media allows you to be able to do this, to make a new you. It isn’t reserved only for social media though, as Baym points out, you can do this in video games as well as forums or any other place where you are interacting with others. Identity has become a huge deal to people in my generation. Everyone wants to be unique and have cool things that other people don’t have. This has definitely happened to me where I wanted something my friends had or I thought I would seem cooler if I did a certain thing. It happens to almost everyone.

For me, Social media has definitely mediated my relations with others. Facebook and Twitter have caused me to know what is happening with my friends so much that with some people I have found it hard to talk about things because I already know what is going on in their lives because they constantly update the world. Texting and smart phones make this even more so because I constantly have the feed of updates in my pocket.

Video games on the other hand have helped me form bonds with people I may have never met. I play with people across the world that in any other situation I would never have encountered but because we both play team deathmatch in Call of Duty I now can team up with them and talk to them in party chat as if we have been friends for a long time. And if someone had said that I would be talking with people all the time from around the world in video games 8 years ago I would of thought they were insane. This is one of the many ways in which media is shaping my relations with people.

Facebook, Twitter and really any social media site have also changed the way society and humans interact. They make it so that people can talk to anyone they want as long as they are “friends”. They also make it easy for people to keep in touch. This has made it so people who I might have lost touch or did in fact lose touch with I have now reconnected with because we both have facebook profiles.

One way in which technology has negatively affected me is through texting. At first I loved texting, I would say I was a texting fiend. I was constantly texting all my friends and even people I was just ok friends with just because I could. However, it made it so that I was not going to go see people in person and talking to them face to face because it was so much easier just to text them if I needed something. This made it so that some of the relationships that I thought were very strong were actually not as much I first believed. It wasn’t until my phone broke that I realized how my phone wasn’t something I needed to always have. I cut back and started interacting more and my old social self came back to the surface.

Another thing Baym brought up was how media makes it so that we can form our own personal identities as well as our own social identity and that we want to be seen and known by our identities we create and that they need to be original and our own and thats why people will sometimes make up their own identities to achieve this. While I have never made up an identity  I can appreciate wanting to have your own self identity that makes you feel good but also having a social identity that allows you to be the person you want everyone else to know. In facebook I hide some pictures I don’t want everyone to see because I think they make me look a certain way that isn’t how I am. It is a common trait for people to not one others to judge them based on what they have done and now with media you know what everyone has done so keeping your social identity the way you want can be tough.

When Wesch talks about Youtube and how it is a phenomena this is very much the way our generation is going. And how people upload videos of how they do something and want everyone to see it and see them as very funny or very cool because they do a cool stunt. Media has become to shape how we perceive cool and how we perceive interesting and how we perceive ourselves and identity.

Can't Handle Constantly Responding to Emails? Try this tip out!

We all can get overwhelmed by that ever increasing inbox. I am the kind of guy that likes to have no outstanding emails that I haven't at least looked at. It actually bothers me if I haven't opened an email. Sometimes though, I just don't have the time to look and then respond right away. And then when I finally do get time I forget that I needed to respond to the email. Today, I was looking through my typical list of blogs I always read and came across an article by Lifehacker that told me how to cure this problem. It was setting up a customized email response that gets sent to anyone who emails you. Now this may not work for everyone but creating a custom response to the people that email you the most could be a very impressive and effective tool! The part I like the best is how you can put in other ways to contact you if they need you urgently. As a student I wish my professors would use this because sometimes I can't wait until the next day or the next week, whenever they finally find the time to respond to me. All in all this seems like a solid idea. So check it out if you would like!

Avoid Email Distractions with a Custom Automated Email Response

Bye Mr. Balmer!

Steve Balmers intense, tearful goodbye to Microsoft.

Steve Balmer made his official good bye's to Microsoft this week. He was CEO of the enormous company and was loved by many of the employees if not all. While Microsoft has had its ups and downs recently over the past few years this man has been behind a lot of the ups. To say the least he was passionate about the company and whoever replaces him will have big shoes to fill.

The Hidden Gem that is Twitter.

believe, neptune monologue: Welcome to the Twitter World: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-should-care-about-twitter-2013-9 This article entitled, "Why You Should Care About Twitter,&qu...

I have been wanting to write a piece about Twitter and why I think more people would use it if they actually knew how functional and fantastic it was. The blog believe, neptune monologue has given me the perfect opportunity to do that. This post really sums up my main point about twitter which is that it is the perfect news source. Every news source or well known blog or company update their twitter the second they post something new. This means that it is the perfect way to get all the information you want without having to go to a bunch of different sites. For me this means that I can look through all of my tech blogs and websites new articles in the same place at the same time. Which is huge because a lot of the apps that try to replicate that experience are either non-existent or super slow or buggy. So if you have not checked twitter out yet I think it is high time that you do.

OMG IOS7 IS OUT! Said every Iphone user ever this week.

IOS7 just recently came out, as if you didn't know this from all of your friends exclaiming it to you. Guys we get it. However if you are one of the lucky many to download the new update there are a few things you need to know. Luckily Lifehacker composed a great list of "10 Secret Features of IOS7". SO the next time you run into an iphone user you can wow them with something they didn't know they could do on their iphone. My favorite is probably number 2. You can make Audio-only Factime calls. If you don't get why that's funny leave a comment and I would be happy to explain.

Top 10 Secrets of IOS7

The Voice of Siri, How Computers "Talk"

The last few classes have all had one common theme, computer voices. We talked about Hal as well as about Siri. But what we did not really bring up is what was really happening when these computers "talked" to us. In this article by The Verge, they discuss and interview the people who made Siri. The Biggest thing that I think we all knew deep down was that "for every Siri, there's an actor sitting in a sound booth, really needing to go to the bathroom." But what people I think do not realize is the extent to which this statement is true. These actors are literally sitting there day in and day out repeating different words and the same words over and over again in different tones to reflect different meaning, such as a question or and declarative statement. But don't take my word for it watch the video or read the article. It explains in depth the tremendous amount of work that goes into making Siri be able to tell you where the nearest Starbucks is so you can get your coffee fix in for the day.
Machine Language: How Siri Found its Voice.