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How might technology influence a college student in the future, and what can we expect from our learning institutions in regards to advancements? In which type of environment will students find themselves learning in 10, 15 or even 20 years from now?

Technology in its current form serves to provide a sense of ease in school life. In its present form students can enrol in courses, send and receive assignments, view grades and even view uploaded lecture audio/video or notes. Technology has also emerged as the best research platform available; it is able to present a vast expanse of information while allowing for the content to be the latest and most accurate. Without technology providing the ease of use it does in these areas, more student time would have to be allocated to the monotonous tasks and less time to the important tasks such as studying for that upcoming exam or proofreading that all important essay.
The future will prove to simplify things even more. I predict that laptops will have progressed to the point where a professor may interact with all machines present in his/her classroom from their own, sending us documents, PowerPoint presentations, videos, etc. near instantly. Perhaps a device similar to the Microsoft Surface will be available at every desk, and the students would be able to login with a Windows Live ID and have access to their entire student profiles, homework and all. The future of technology will serve to keep us more connected to school, even when we aren’t currently there.

The desktop as we currently know it will have been revolutionized and serve to be more than a "space for icons and wallpaper". The desktop will be extremely interactive through the use of widgets, real-time news updates, etc. It will also be cloud-based so that one may carry their desktop with them no matter to which device or where they are connected. Students who are not able to attend class for whichever reason will be able to connect via their desktop to a live feed of their lectures, and furthermore even participate in the discussions either through type or voice conferencing.

As computing makes the shift from static to dynamic (or cloud) computing the need to stay connected and updated regardless of device is paramount.. No longer will you arrive at class realizing you forgot to print out your essay and that you only have it on your home PC. Within a few clicks, you would have access to all your files. We are already seeing the beginnings of this with Windows Live Mesh and the future looks bright. I can already imagine walking into a Library on campus that is fully equipped with Surface PC’s that allow me to compute as if I were in my own living room.

Office will be completely cloud-based and store all preferences via a Windows Live login, allowing for trans-machine accessibility. The hallmark programs of the Office line will still be in use, but perhaps not in their separate forms. We may see one Office applications with the potential to do what the separate applications have done and to save or publish in one universal file format. OneNote perhaps will be able to intelligently listen to a lecture video and extract key terms based on nuances in the human voice that stress importance; this will serve to add a new dimension to student note-taking and increase student efficiency.
Smartphones in the future will serve as laptops now; imagine wirelessly transmitting a PowerPoint presentation from your mobile device to a projector. The ease of sharing documents by means of instant transfer between devices similar to the present day Zune’s ability to share music between Zune-to-Zune will make group collaboration seamless.

Continue reading @ Neowin.net

According to telecom provider Interoute, three of the four underseas sub-cables connecting Asia to North America have been severed for unknown reasons. These cables carry more than 75% of the internet traffic between the America, Europe, and the Middle East. The cut occurred today somewhere in the Mediterranean, between Sicily and Tunisia, though, at present, the reasons for the cut are unknown; nevertheless, France Telecom has stated that it thinks an attack is "unlikely."

At present, 65% of internet traffic with India is offline, 59% with Singapore, 44% with Malaysia, 55% with Saudi Arabia, 52% with Egypt, 39% with Taiwan, and 51% with Pakistan. Yemen and Sudan have also reported phone and Internet difficulties Friday, though it is unclear whether this is tied to the outage. The breakage will probably take several days for the cables to be repaired, so business traffic is currently being routed through lines going to the US. More updates as they come.

In January this year a breakdown in an international undersea cable network disrupted Internet links to Egypt, India and Gulf Arab countries.

Breaking news: something’s happening to the internet, right now. We’re just not quite sure what.

Interoute, the internet networks company, reports that three of the four internet sub-cables that run from Asia to North America have been damaged.

These carry more than 75 per cent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America. It’s hard to gather what this actually means - is it that the internet is down or (more likely) significantly slower than usual between the Middle East and America? (If you’re reading this, let’s face it, the internet has not shut down altogether)

But, according to the company, there is a domino effect taking place. Interoute says it is:

hearing that offices have lost their entire private network connectivity. As a result, users are unable to do their daily job over the internet and are turning to their mobile phones to communicate across the globe. This is having a knock on effect on the domestic voice networks, which are getting a surge of calls needing to be routed internationally. These calls need to be routed onto international gateways that pass voice traffic in longer directions around the world to avoid the cable breaks – causing more quality issues and risk more call failures, in turn causing more calls to be placed and increasing the pressure on local voice networks.

What (I think) this means is that companies’ private internet services have gone down. So, if they can get access, they have had to go on the public internet and mobile phones, like the rest of us average joes, to get their work done. That results in more strain on mobile phone networks, which means more phone calls go down and the internet becomes slower.

Source: TypePad

Kodak’s wireless photo frame is the first to use Organic Light Emitting Diodes, the new technology expected to replace LCDs soon.

The 7.6 inch frame sports a 800×480 resolution with a touch-sensitive frame (not the display itself). Utilising AM-OLED technology this crisp display is capable of a 30000:1 white to black contrast ratio, perfect image representation at any angle and visibility in sunlight. As it is wireless you can connect your computer to synchronise and transfer images. Another feature is the ability to connect to the internet on the frame and access Kodak Gallery, Flickr and FrameChannel online.

The photo frame can play video files as well as background sound while viewing slideshows. It has a variety of ports including miniUSB, USB, memory card reader, audio output and a seperate audio input. You can use the USB or memory card reader to add additional storage if you manage to exhaust the 2GB internal storage.

If you believe the death knell has sounded for LCD technology and would like to pick up this next-generation beauty now, you will be dismayed to find it at US$999 on Kodak’s website.
If you’re still wondering what all the fuss is about, check out the video below, comparing Kodak’s new offering to an ordinary LCD photo frame.

It is expected that more OLED announcements will be made at the CES 2009 starting January 8th.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will become the second mass-market retail chain to start selling Apple Inc.’s iPhone, with two store representatives saying the world’s largest retailer will carry two models of the Web-surfing handset this month.

Employees in the cell-phone departments at five California stores, contacted by phone today, said Wal-Mart will offer iPhones by the end of December. Employees are currently being trained on how to sell the device, all five said.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs tapped Best Buy Co., the largest U.S. electronics retailer, in September to sell the device as he works to win more buyers. Before then, the iPhone had been sold only by Apple and AT&T Inc., the exclusive provider of wireless service for the phone in the U.S.

Analysts say Apple may offer a discontinued 4-gigabyte version through Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart and sell it for $99. Apple currently sells two models at $199 and $299.

“A $99, Apple-branded cell phone is inevitable,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst for Kaufman Brothers in San Francisco. “One of the key things Apple needs to do to drive broader iPhone adoption is to build a more complete product line” with low- end, mid-range and high-end products, Wu said in a Dec. 5 note.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling wouldn’t respond to the report and said the company “does not comment on rumor or speculation.” Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman said the company hasn’t made an official announcement on an iPhone offering and has no comment. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel declined to comment.

Source: Bloomberg

Before meeting with Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of a consumer gene-testing service called 23andMe, I know just three things about her: she’s pregnant, she’s married to Google’s Sergey Brin, and she went to Yale. But after an hour chatting with her in the small office she shares with co-founder Linda Avey at 23andMe’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., I know some things no Internet search could reveal: coffee makes her giddy, she has a fondness for sequined shoes and fresh-baked bread, and her unborn son has a 50% chance of inheriting a high risk for Parkinson’s disease.

Learning and sharing your genetic secrets are at the heart of 23andMe’s controversial new service — a $399 saliva test that estimates your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions ranging from baldness to blindness. Although 23andMe isn’t the only company selling DNA tests to the public, it does the best job of making them accessible and affordable. The 600,000 genetic markers that 23andMe identifies and interprets for each customer are "the digital manifestation of you," says Wojcicki (pronounced Wo-jis-key), 35, who majored in biology and was previously a health-care investor. "It’s all this information beyond what you can see in the mirror."

We are at the beginning of a personal-genomics revolution that will transform not only how we take care of ourselves but also what we mean by personal information. In the past, only élite researchers had access to their genetic fingerprints, but now personal genotyping is available to anyone who orders the service online and mails in a spit sample. Not everything about how this information will be used is clear yet — 23andMe has stirred up debate about issues ranging from how meaningful the results are to how to prevent genetic discrimination — but the curtain has been pulled back, and it can never be closed again. And so for pioneering retail genomics, 23andMe’s DNA-testing service is Time’s 2008 Invention of the Year.

The 1997 film Gattaca depicted it as a futuristic nightmare, but human-genotyping has emerged instead as both a real business and a status symbol. Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein says he is backing 23andMe not for its cinematic possibilities but because "I think it is a good investment. This is strictly medical and business-like." Google has chipped in almost half the $8.9 million in funding raised by the firm, which counts Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch and Ivanka Trump among its clients.

Weinstein isn’t saying what his test told him, but Wojcicki and her famous husband are perfectly willing to discuss their own genetic flaws. Most worrisome is a rare mutation that gives Brin an estimated 20% to 80% chance of getting Parkinson’s disease. There’s a 50% chance that the couple’s child, due later this year, will inherit that same gene. "I don’t find this embarrassing in any way," says Brin, who blogged about it in September. "I felt it was a lot of work and impractical to keep it secret, and I think in 10 years it will be commonplace to learn about your genome."

And yet while Wojcicki and Brin aren’t worried about genetic privacy, others are. In May, President George W. Bush signed a bill that makes it illegal for employers and insurers to discriminate on the basis of genetic information. California and New York tried to block the tests on the grounds that they were not properly licensed, but have so far been unsuccessful. Others worry about how sharing one’s genetic data might affect close relatives who would prefer not to let a family history of schizophrenia or Lou Gehrig’s disease become public. And what if a potential mate demands to see your genome before getting serious? Such hypotheticals are endless. And some researchers argue that the tests are flawed. "The uncertainty is too great," says Dr. Muin Khoury, director of the National Office of Public Health Genomics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who argues that it is wrong to charge people for access to such preliminary and incomplete data. Many diseases stem from several different genes and are triggered by environmental factors. Since less than a tenth of our 20,000 genes have been correlated with any condition, it’s impossible to nail down exactly what component is genetic. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," says Dr. Alan Guttmacher of the National Institutes of Health.

Read more @ Time.com

The original mouse invention which is now in use on every office and home PC turns 40 next week.

Looking like something that could take your fingers clean off, the wooden block with a single red button on top was unveiled to the world 40 years ago. Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse and worked with Bill English to build the device. In 1967, Engelbart applied for, and in 1970 he received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels.

In 1981, Xerox included a mouse with their Star computer system, and a few years later Apple offered one with their Macintosh system. Microsoft then made it the standard device for their Windows operating system. In time the mouse developed, with a second button then in some cases a third and you can now buy mice with 5 or more buttons.

Unfortunately Engelbart never received any royalties for his mouse invention, partly because his patent expired in 1987, before the PC revolution made the mouse the main input device, and also because subsequent mice used different mechanisms that did not infringe upon the original patent.

Fast forward to 2008 and we have the HP TouchSmart desktop system, Apple’s iPhone and a range of new touchscreen enabled devices that are keeping users away from using the mouse. Microsoft is currently working on Windows 7 which improves the use of touch in Windows.
Steve Prentice, an analyst at Gartner Research, said: "I very much doubt that we’ll be using the mouse in 40 years’ time."

Do you believe that in 40 years time we will no longer require a mouse to interact with PCs or will PCs even exist?

BMW has hosted a video on how they are implementing Microsoft Surface for product configuration. BMW is the first car manufacturer worldwide to use this product commercially. By interacting with this multi-touch surface that runs on special hardware and software provided by Microsoft, customers can configure their BMW and instantly see their results.

The Microsoft Surface is a multi-touch interface that allows a user or multiple users to manipulate digital content by using hand movements instead of a mouse or keyboard. BMW will take the customer experience to another level with this technology, basically each customer can configure their future car by simply placing some small tiles on the touch-screen and the car’s color will change instantly. This also applies to different trims or wheel.

Vectorform is the company that has developed this tecnology for BMW and as we reported back in August, they have more exciting things to come.

BMW Product Navigator

Source: BMW Blog

According to reports, a Belgian boy was purchased over the Internet by a couple in Ghent. Reports indicate that the potential parents paid between $6421.90 and $12843.81 USD for the child.

The couple denies paying for the actual child, stating that any costs they paid were merely pregnancy costs that were charged to the natural parents.

Dutch officials state that the couple have broken the laws for adopting children and as such the baby must be handed over to welfare authorities. The Netherlands courts have asked that the boy be placed into temporary custody until a decision is made by the Belgian government as to what action is required.

The temporary withholding of the child according to the Netherlands Justice Council is due to the lack of clarity in regards to the child’s family history, something that "is of fundamental importance for a child growing up."

Inquiries are being made by both Dutch and Belgian officials.

Verizon Wireless disclosed late Thursday that several of its employees accessed and viewed President-elect Barack Obama’s personal cellphone account, and said it planned to discipline workers for the privacy breach.

"We apologize to President-Elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day," the company’s chief executive, Lowell McAdam, said in a statement.

Verizon said it discovered the unauthorized account access this week and said it related to an account that has been inactive "for several months." The device on the account was a standard feature phone, rather than a smartphone with advanced email and data capabilities.

The company said it has put all employees with access to the account on leave, with pay, as it sorts out which of those workers accessed the account without a justifiable business purpose. Those who did not have a good reason to view the account will be punished, the company said.

Verizon Wireless, the nation’s No. 2 wireless carrier by subscribers, is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC. The company is headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J. and has 71,000 employees nationwide.

Read more @ WSJ