Child Finder

If your a concern parent and wondering where little Billy is late at night then the companies of Sprint and Disney are here to help. Sprint is the first U.S. phone service provider to offer global positioning software technology and add tracking device capability to family cell phone features. The family locator service will cost another $9.99 a month for up to four phones. This is quickly developing into a mainstream feature such as the camera or text messaging capabilities of cell phones. This also means less freedom for the youth of today who have access to a cell phone. Disney's service will be available in June and will run on airtime leased from Sprint. Parents will also be able to limit their phone use to rein in high monthly bills. No longer can kids escape from the clutches of their parents and hide away at a friends house. Where has our freedom gone?

Cell Phone GPS

GPS receivers are a regular feature found in most cell phones of today but the user can not take advantage of them. Nextel's been putting GPS receivers in its cell phones for years. Now you can finally do something useful with that receiver by broadcasting your location in real-time thanks to a free service called Mologogo. The requirements are pretty specific: You need a Nextel phone, Java, and a GPS receiver on the handset. Just download the Mologogo software to your phone and you can share your location with other users with Mologogo-enabled cell phones or via the Web. There is large concern with software such as this because of privacy dangers that could occur with unwanted cell phone tracking. This is however a useful feature because it enables parents to keep track on their children in real time. I think the idea of real time GPS on cell phones is a good idea as long as it is agreed upon by both parties who are tracking each other. It would be great for finding the location of a friend who you are trying to meet up with. I can also see the dangers with such a program such as unwanted stalking or following.

No More Polaroid Pictures

One more product will soon been turned to dust with the cancelation of Polaroid Pictures. On the eve of the product's 60th anniversary, Polaroid is announcing that its namesake instant film is being discontinued. None of Polaroid's two dozen auto-developing products will be produced after 2008. Depending on the type of film, Polaroid says you can expect to find it on store shelves until the first quarter of 2009, but most of its films will be gone well before then. Polaroid is being made obsolete due to the popularity of digital cameras which make it easy to see what you just shot thanks to their built-in LCDs. You also don’t have to wait at all, unlike Polaroids. The advancements in technology have taken the bite out of another historic product that has a deep rooted history in the documentation of photography.

Virtual Campus

The University of Illinois put together a program designed to get students who have trouble attending regular classes and have them attend via the internet. The end result was the Global Campus, a $3 million program which offers coursework through the Internet instead of in person. The University is now using it to offer several degree plans but the problem is there is only a total of 10 students. The university is denying accusations saying that it’s too soon to draw any conclusions about the three-month program since it won’t be promote until September. Global Campus is perhaps the first major, accredited institution to offer full Bachelor's and Master's degrees online, rather than simply offering prerecorded videos and audio of old classes to the public. More casual students looking to further their education without the pressures of earning grades can look to some of the other highly-touted online programs. I really dislike the idea of an Online Institution. I don’t think the full accreditation of a degree should be viable over the internet. The students are not learning the full material and the help of a teacher and resources are simply not available to the students in my opinion. I think this is a just a way for the university to collect more money from students. The applicants to these online courses seem highly unmotivated so it is likely the university will collect their cheques with the hope that they don’t succeed with the online courses. I feel that attending regular classes should be the only means of full Bachelor Degrees and Master’s degrees throughout the country.

Phone Interviews

Yesterday I had my very first phone interview with the City of Calgary. I have had interviews in the past but these were all face to face and with no more then two people. I felt very relaxed during these interviews and they went well. I was more nervous for my phone interview then I had been for any other interview in my life. Once I got on the phone they told me I would be on a speaker phone with three people listening in. This was intimidating to me because I had no idea what they people looked like and how they were reacting. It is so much easier in a face to face interview because you can see the other person’s facial reactions to the things that you are saying. At first it felt like I was talking to myself because I spoke for a good two minutes and had no references such as body language or facial expression to tell me if I was saying the right things or going totally off base. The latter part of the interview was more of an interrogation then a job interview with questions regarding my better judgment and social habits. I would not recommend a phone interview if the choice is yours. I feel that a face to face interview is better for both the interviewer and interviewee. You can pick up some much more from body language that is none existent over the phone. The only positive to a phone interview is the fact that you do not have to dress up nice to impress the person on the other line.

The Power of the Internet

The only reason you have to leave your computer in today’s world is to go to the bathroom. With the click of a mouse you can access anything you can imagine via the internet. This includes buying any item you can possibility image and having it transported to your front door. You can even use the internet to call the pizza guy via a program such as Skype and have him developer it within 20 minutes or it is free. The internet is a beautiful thing but it defiantly making a lot of lazy people. You no longer have to go out and find that perfect jacket or pair of shoes when you can go on eBay and buy it for a cheaper price and have it shipped to your front door. You have just saved time and money without even leaving your desk chair. I personally have very little experience with purchasing goods over the internet because I like to see the items in person before I purchase them. The idea of getting ripped off is a constant fear I have if I were to buy something over eBay. I may have problems with online purchasing but millions of people do it on an annual basis in North America. It is a major industry and it is a positive for small companies that can’t afford to rent out a store but have a great product. It allows these companies to distribute their products without an actual store location. The power of the internet continues to grow and the trend of lazy internet users will continue well into the future. This internet purchasing is promoting less face to face communication in our world. People are becoming more in touch with their computer screen than with real people.

Digital Kills Paper

I remember the days when we had to do full out bristle board poster displays for projects on Mars in Geography Class and Gambling Addicts for Health Sciences. This was of course many years ago when I was still in elementary school and the power of PowerPoint had not taken over the poor paper presentations of the past. These historic projects on paper took many more hours to produce and required precession cutting and pasting of text and images. Once high school hit the digital age took over and paper soon became extinct. No longer were students required to create bristle board presentations and displays for their teachers and classmates. Teachers began giving demos on the use of PowerPoint and its benefits for presentations. I can now say that I am a power point master after having done around 50+ presentations for a number of classes in the past 7+ years. It seems the idea of creativity has run out the door because most PowerPoint presentations are predictable with a prefabricated introduction, body and conclusion. It is hard to break away from this mold because this is what we are taught to do in order to get the best results. The hardest part with a PowerPoint presentation is keeping the audiences attention. Students have seen hundreds of PowerPoint presentations so it is difficult to make yours unique and fresh. I’m sure Microsoft is developing new additions to their PowerPoint application to make it the be all and end all of presentation software. The benefit to Microsoft’s domination is less trees being cut down in order to produce bristle board for little Timmy’s Grade 5 Science Fair.