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Facebook: the number one source of cyberbullying

by Geneviève Guilbault

After only thirteen years of activity, Facebook is by far the most popular and influential social media in the world. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, it has today more than 1.8 billion users and a market cap of $250 billion US dollars as of December 2016.

Of course, since it’s the biggest social media platform in the world, it has brought a lot of changes to the way our society works. Although a lot of good things came out from the creation of this platform, there are a lot of bad sides to it too. Zuckerberg created it as a fast way of communication and sharing but little did he know that it would become one of the most important source of cyberbullying in the world. The lives of every users became instantly so public. We could now contact a person on the other side of the earth in seconds and post a picture of our meals and other useless stuff just to share with the world that we eat healthy or that our new outfit is really cute. With all that sharing of every aspects of our lives, people started judging and commenting mean things on other’s pictures or in private. Where else can a bully leave a comment, or upload a photo for his victim’s entire social circle to see? Bullying became so easy since you could just do it behind your computer and not worry about the consequences of the act. 81% of teens say bullying online is easier to get away with according to Sam Laird. Sadly, because of that, Facebook, who was meant to entertain and communicate, also became responsible for the worst nightmare of so many people, which is cyberbullying.

A lot of children have been bullied in school their whole lives, but when they would come home, it would be over so they could actually overcome it by changing school. But now, even when they come home after school, the bullying continues on social medias such a Facebook. Cyberbullying can lead to depression and even suicide. It is actually the third leading cause of death among young people leading to over 4500 kids committing suicide every year. A study in Britain found that nearly 30 percent of students are either bullies or victims of bullying.

There are so many cases of suicide caused by cyberbullying and still, people keep getting bullied everyday everywhere in the world. From 2003 to 2011, there have been 41 suicides involving cyberbullying only in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Of course, the numbers aren’t decreasing. Horrifying stories of young kids committing suicide because of cyberbullying often make the news. One of the most popular recent cases, which I remember clearly, is the story of Amanda Todd who committed suicide in 2012. She had posted a video in which she used flash cards to tell about her experiences of being blackmailed and bullied. She hanged herself just a month after posting the video and as of that day, the video had been seen more than 17 millions time. I remember watching it and it had really troubled me to see that people could be so cruel. There is now a blog called the “Amanda Todd Legacy” created by her family to help young people who are struggling with mental health issues.

Of course, Facebook does try to prevent these types of incidents from happening. Users can now report bullying directly through the site. There are tools in place to block unwanted people from commenting or messaging them. Facebook also participates in National Bullying Prevention Month, and offers tips to parents and teachers on keeping teens safe. I really hope that these small gestures are actually changing something and that maybe someday we could hope to live in a world where cyberbullying doesn’t exists.

#socialplatforms

Censor This

by Bernardo Sunye

Censorship has always been a delicate subject to talk about, especially when it concerns the Internet. Some people are for it, as they believe it is the best way to protect people from unwanted subjects, while others believe censoring handicaps someone’s knowledge, and doesn’t help them deal with the real world. This debate can be centered on a variety of situations, such as parental control, blocking sites at a school, or the full-out lockdown of a country.

When it comes to parental control on the Internet, the argument essentially goes like this: those for it will say that children should not be allowed to view sites that could provide a bad influence or maybe even scar them emotionally (for those of you who have been on 4Chan or Reddit, you know what I’m talking about), while those against it will say that depending on the age of the kid, he should be allowed to make his own decisions, and even if you do try block sites, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to make sure your kid doesn’t see them anyway. Children’s early introduction to technology can make them quite savvy when it comes to disabling parental control. That, coupled with kid’s desire to prove their parents wrong and access the site they want to go on, makes it quite difficult for parents to have any sort of control when it comes restricting Internet access.

The argument for schools is basically the same, except it’s much harder to get back past the Web filtering software. This may seem like a good idea for the most part, as it prevents students from accessing certain things that may be too much for them at their age, like Pornhub (although again, at a certain age, the kid has the right to make his own decisions). The problem is this software sometimes blocks educational sites and that are relevant tot what the student is researching, because they may contain words that are automatically red-flagged and filtered. For instance, The Canadian National History Society was obligated to change its magazines name, because The Beaver was causing the web filters to block it from schools. So, while the thought and intentions may be in a positive vein, this censoring just isn’t practical.

The problem truly lies with a countrywide ban of information, much like the situation involving the Chinese government. This is a country that blocks sites from around the world that criticize the Communist Party and provide harmful information that could discredit it. The scary thing about this is that the Internet is extremely popular in China, with more than 700 million users. To put that into perspective, a quarter of the world’s online population comes from China. This is frightening because this proves that the Chinese government’s extreme actions may in fact be working and sends a terrible message to the rest of the world’s leaders. This restriction of information is benefitting the Chinese government, and if there’s no worldwide pushback against this sort of action, what kind of world could we be looking at in 50, 30 or maybe even 20 years?

Internet censorship is something that must be looked at carefully. With moderation it can be a positive contribution to the world, but if it gets too extreme, it could have a severely negative impact on our world.

#modernissues

by Cedric Meloche

With the introduction of the Internet to the masses came means of mass reproduction for everything; this opened up many opportunities for good and bad uses. It allowed small artists to get a taste of fame through the internet, without a third party regulating their work and taking a cut out of their profits, since labels weren’t required for exposition, but it also gave an amazing tool for thieves to steal art; so amazing in fact that it would become out of the owner’s control, since it was used so many times. Although the Internet brought a great deal of new content for people to enjoy, it also cut a lot of the ties between the artists and their work, because of the newly simple nature of theft. Indeed, since people could steal in the comfort of their home, without fear of any repercussions, it was popularized/made acceptable, rendering the job of artists and labels to protect what’s theirs basically impossible, since the scale of the task grew exponentially.

Things weren’t always this way: before the internet, it was impossible for people to do this without very specialised equipment, and the few people that were able to do it didn’t represent much of a threat to the sales of the artist’s work. This is why when the Internet came along, bringing with it this tool of theft, labels and artists didn’t know how to react to this threat to their profits, since it never had been a threat. With time came solutions, but none truly solved the problem. Most were partial (taking down popular sharing sites) or temporary solutions (applying restrictions to the music’s downloads that people would eventually find a way around), so the industry had to find a way to make profit off of public artworks. They are still working on it, and not every person or company has the same way of doing it, but they now know it’s the best way to keep on doing what they’re doing without going broke. YouTube, vevo and soundcloud have become popular sites to help make profit off of public work with ads, but some people and labels still try to keep the masses from stealing what they sell, to no avail. Fortunately, this issue isn’t as bad as it used to be because theft Is no longer necessary to access most free art, but it still is an issue, for content creators that don’t use music for their personal use, but integrate it in public content. This new issue had labels and artists go through the same process all over again, trying to keep their work from being taken without their agreement, but it was much easier to solve this issue this time, since bots could be invented to go through every single video, to find out if they had specific music in them. Unfortunately, this only solved the issue on one website, making it very hard to keep every single person from stealing their music, but it got rid of most of the problem. Today, people are still trying to figure out a way to regain full rights to their work, but I personally doubt they will ever be able to, since it has become so easy to reproduce everything.

#modernissues

The Dollar Value of the Internet

by Jeremy Sarmiento

Unfortunately, there is no standard way to determine the dollar value of the internet due to its ubiquitous nature. No one owns the internet and it is not like stock that is traded on a stock exchange.

One economist, Hal Varien of The Economist suggested in an article entitled The value of the internet: now and in the future that the value of the internet be measured by calculating the cost of replacing it. In other words, if the internet were to be removed, how would we replace the internet in order to get the information that is now readily available via the web? We would have to evaluate the cost of going to the library, going to a store instead of shopping on line, etc. For example, Hal Varien considered the cost of going to the library versus searching online:

“I attempted to convert this time to dollar savings using the average wage and came up with about $500 per adult worker per year. This may seem like a lot, but it works out to just $1.37 a day. I would guess that most readers of this blog get $1.37 worth of value per day out of their search engine use.”

As he points out, even though this value seems low, we must also consider the quality of the data we can access online versus going to a library:

“When doing this calculation, it is important to take account of the fact that since the cost of getting answers is now so low, we ask a lot more questions. When getting an answer involved a trip to the library and 22 minutes to answer an average question, we only attempted to get answers to important questions. Now that it involves only a few minutes at a search engine to answer questions, we ask many more—and a lot less valuable—questions.”

Hal Varien also points out that in these cases we are only measuring the dollar value of the use we have today for the internet. It does not take into account the future potential use of the web. It is thus very difficult to put a dollar value on the internet.

With regards to who makes the money from the internet, it is clearly big business. That is, the big businesses that manufacture the equipment that makes the internet accessible to us. The big businesses that provide us the access to the internet such as Bell and Videotron in Quebec and Verizon for the United states. The big businesses that provide the search engines that facilitate online searches such as Yahoo and Google. Not to mention the businesses that develop security applications for the internet and the businesses that develop applications for the internet of things.

This internet of things is in its infancy but the future is clearly headed in that direction. As mentioned in Computer Technology Solutions’ blog “Who gains the most from the Internet of Things”:

“With the Internet of Things gaining ground across virtually all markets, it seems the big players will be the companies that have the most to gain. The Internet of Things stands to network virtually our entire world including, but not limiting to, our cars, appliances and even our houses. One of the largest markets will be business to business, with corporations being able to interconnect in a manner never before seen giving them great abilities to manage factories, buildings and other resources much more easily. It’s these large companies that have the most to gain both from selling and using the evolution of the Internet of Things to their advantage.”

So it is clear that the dollar value of the internet is virtually impossible to determine. And it is equally clear that big business stand to gain the most from the web.

#modernissues

New Wave of Actors in the Age of CGI

by Anthony Dion-Morles

Computer Generated Imagery brought a lot of possibilities since it’s debut. One of them is the creation of CGI actors, which can be used to replicate actors digitally. A lot of questions come to my mind in relation to the use of this new technology: Will the technology be used respectfully? What will they bring to the world of movies and could CGI actors permanently replace real actors?

Movies with CGI actors have been made for a while now. For instance, Avatar and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button are successful results of the technology, since a big part of its characters are modeled after real actors.

The topic of computer-generated actors has also been discussed since a few years. S1mOne is a 2002 movie that revolves around a CGI actress who replaced the original human actress that quit during the production of a film. Her graphics are so realistic that nobody seems to realise that she is actually computer generated, and she seduces everyone by her looks as well as her acting skills. I would say that this film demonstrates the desire that the film industry has towards the creation of CGI actors. Even if this movie is only based around a story that was made up, I believe that it accurately represents the popular opinion about the subject. For instance, this year’s Star Wars movie had a CGI actor that most people were not aware of. Rogue One featured Peter Crushing, the legendary British actor who played Grand Moff Tarkin in the original Star Wars. Since this character passed away in 1994, they had to be innovative in order to bring him back on the screen, which was made by using CGI technology.

The image comparison shows how realistic the reproduction (right) is compared to the original shot of Peter Crushing (left). Grand Moff Tarkin was also not a simple cameo; he had a relatively long appearance with lots of dialogue. This shows the capability of visual effects: As long as you have an actor that can act as a stand in and guide for the graphics, it seems like it can create anything.

Bringing an actor back creates a lot of ethical issues: If the CGI replica of an actor is not done respectfully, it can leave a bad impression of the real actor. In the case of Peter Crushing’s replica, it does not seem like a problem, since the crew mentioned several times that he would have loved to take this role, which is similar to his original one. Another example of what CGI actors help to make is shown in the movie Tron: The Legacy, where a younger version of Jeff Bridges in his 30s is shown. Rather than having makeup, which would be very difficult and time extensive to make, they made a CGI version of what he looked like when he was younger. This effect was very successful: A lot of viewers walked home thinking about how amazing the make-up was done on Bridges, but as we now know, they were actually wrong. Jeff was also enthusiastic towards the creation of his CGI model: “It’s very gratifying to know that I can play a character at any age,” he said. This shows how a well-executed CGI actor can do wonders for the movie industry. For example, a CGI actor can be used to sort out issues with actors and save a movie, which is why I think that this new technology is a great thing for movies, as long as it is well used. Personally, I think that it is pretty safe to say that the technology will not completely replace actors, but it can definitely benefit the movie industry in various great ways.

#moderntech

Travel and Tourism in The Digital Age

by Joanie Dubois

Digital age has changed our way to travel. We don’t have to have assistance from a professional agent to plan a trip. We all can plan vacations or make our own itinerary with the Internet. We are not only seeing our friends’ beautiful pictures from their trips, but we also have access to strangers’ experiences. While planning a trip, we need to find an affordable flight, a well-placed hostel or hotel, attractions to do and tasty restaurants. Thanks to social media, we are able to have reviews from people who have been to these places.

There are 92% people who say they rather take recommendations from strangers then from paid advertisings. Which makes sense, because advertisements are paid to say great things about a brand or a place. Past visitors took upon themselves to share their experiences.

There are 76% people that post vacation pictures online, and 97% are using social networks during their vacation. According to a survey on Facebook, there are 52% people say that friends or family’s pictures have inspired them to go on vacation. I, myself, get inspire a lot from my friends’ beautiful pictures they’ve posted online. It pushes me to go on vacation as soon as possible.

As I mentioned, we get a lot of information on flights, hostels or even restaurants on the Internet. Google is a great source of information, however, many use websites as TripAdvisor, Kayar, Trivago, and Expedia to plan their trip. We all compare flights, hostels and restaurants from Website to Website, and then choose which is more suitable for our trip. There is one popular website for hostel, which is the HostelWorld, where we can find many, if not all, hostels from all around the world. There is also all sorts of reviews on them.

What has grown lately is the Airbnb, which consist to rent a room or a bed or even a couch from someone who lives close by. Some are quite strict and others are open-minded. This can be all planned on social networks. Of course, it would be possible to call a travelling agent, and have her planned it for you, but why pay money for something you can easily do yourself?

Brands also had to adjust to these changes. Since everyone relies on social networks now, therefore they have to be more active online as never before. They put up humoristic posts or beautiful pictures that attract people eyes. For example, Air Transat has intriguing and appealing advertisement videos, which make us want to travel with them. As it is for hostels or hotels, they post pretty pictures of their lobby and rooms online. They obviously wont show the negative side of the hotel. If it looks good on pictures, it’s a win for everyone.

However, that is when the reviews come in. No hostels or hotels can truly hide their bad sides from visitors. For example, I rent a dormitory for 3 nights with my friend in Miami. The room was okay, but the bathroom was a bit dirty. However, there was a cleaning lady coming into to room twice a day, which makes everything better.

Furthermore, travelling today is easier than it was before; it is also more affordable for everyone. As it is for my personal experiences, I get influence by everyone on social media. I see breathtaking landscapes and beautiful videos of other people, which makes me want to do the same. I know for a fact that I am not the only one either.

#popculture

How GOOGLE MAPS Made GOOGLE Better

by Jonathan Petrel

Google is the world’s most popular search engine of all time on the web and still is today. Over 1.17 billion people use Google around the world. That’s over 114.7 billion searches on the Internet. Google is such a powerful technological company, that it owns other popular companies and services on the web such as Blogger and YouTube. It also offers other different services within the browser that are added on for everyone which are Gmail, Google Translate, Google Maps, Google Images, etc. Google Maps is one of these services that have made a huge impact to both the web and Google itself. It provides us with an online service to discover different locations and routes to destinations around the globe, just by checking a map on our devices.

Google Maps was once a small company that wasn’t created or owned by Google. In 2003, it started as a C++ program (general-purpose programming language) designed to be used as a mapping technology program for users. Google Maps was created by two Danish brothers named Lars and Jens Rasmussen. It was originally a company based in Sydney, Australia which was called “Where 2 Technologies”. Both Lars and Jens initially planned the program to be a paid downloadable product, but after presenting their product to Google for support, they decided to make it a web browser application for the Internet. In 2005, Where 2 Technologies was bought ownership by the Google Company and was later called “Google Maps” which became a free service for the Google web browser on the Internet.

Google Maps has approximately over 21 million GB (gigabytes) of data on their system. It is accessible through mobile, laptops, computers, tablets and other devices to retrieve directions to a certain area on the map. But why does a service such as Google Maps provide with so much data information and make it digitally accessible for everyone? Early beta of Google Maps only focused on helping people getting to Point A to Point B, which is much like a GPS system. Today, Google Maps allows users to have and play around with many features and tools that are reliable to find information about street names, road signs, traffic conditions or business industries through satellite technology.

The most popular tool and feature that Google Maps provides us with is Street View. Street View is 360-degree photos that are taken in almost every location in the world by many crewmembers sent by Google to drive around in their vehicles taking these photos in every single road they can find around the globe. They have taken over 10 million images around the world since 2007 and have drove over 5 million miles on the road to take them. It uses optical character recognition (OCR), which identifies information in the photos and transfers them to the database for people to search. People can consider this feature useful from viewing these photos to find and observe a specific location. Another important feature is Location Services, which can pinpoint your exact location on your smartphone or computer and provide data information on the closest routes and estimated time to reaching your destination by either walking, biking, driving or using public transportation. Lastly, Google Maps provides us with a feature called Google Traffic. It displays live traffic conditions on roads and highways that are near your area, which is helpful to avoid being stuck in traffic when trying to reach your destination on time.

To conclude, Google Maps is a tremendous online and offline service that has changed Google to become suitable for everyone’s needs on the web. Many people today not only go on the Google search bar to seek what they desire to know on the Internet, but Google Maps is just around the top corner of our browser to search for specific places to travel across the globe.

https://your-champlain-media.tumblr.com/post/158926277484/google-maps

#socialplatforms

Glory of Amazon

by Kevin Gauthier

What is the company “Amazon”?

Amazon is an amazing company that has been around for over 20 years, starting all the way back since 1994, July 5th when it was first founded and launched. If you’ve been living under a rock during all that time than you’ve been missing out. Amazon.com is an American electronic commerce (E-Commerce) and cloud computing company, in broader words; it’s a massive online store! You can practically buy everything from anyone all across the world. In fact, Amazon is so globally diverse it offers international shipping to certain other countries and it has its own separate retail websites for other countries; USA, UK, France, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India, Mexico, practically all around the globe! The man responsible for this incredible innovation is Jeff Bezos, he and his company are based in Seattle, Washington still, ever since Amazon was first launched. It is the longest Internet based retailer in the world. But not everyone knows where it all started, some people know Amazon as something completely different way back when.

Amazon.com started as a small online book store and was very region locked meaning wasn’t accessible all around the world like it is today, nor was it very popular. But as the years go by the online store gradually grew to selling more variety, such as DVDs, CDs, Blue rays, video downloading/streaming software, video games, electronics, audio books, furniture, food, toys, jewellery, and virtually anything from big, plasma flat HD screens too something as simple as shoestring. Amazon has been so successful that they’ve been producing their own line of electronic devices such as the Kindle E-Readers, Fire Tablets, Fire, TV and their latest device, the Echo that is essentially their version of “Siri”. In 2015, Amazon surpassed Wal-Mart as the most valuable retailer in the US by market capitalization and is as of 2016 Q3 the fourth most valuable public company falling behind short by Alphabet, Apple and Microsoft.

What is it like having a job at Amazon?

Ever wanted to apply to Amazon wondering what it must be like working for such a complex and interesting company? Well you might want to reconsider or even feel like you’re up to the challenge. It is said that Amazon is incredibly strict on hiring new faces. The company is very serious on producing a great working and trusted online store, for everyone to have confidence in its ability to preform, therefore when it comes to getting new workforce, the company strives to obtain very skilled employees with upmost trust to them as much to the company its self. But once passing the “test of worthiness” working at amazon has its benefits, Amazon has enormous compensation and benefits for its employees; Medical, dental, vision insurance, company paid basic life, accident coverage, company paid short/long disability plan, health, time off benefits, employee assistance program and much more. As of 2017 Amazon has hired nearly 269, 000 trusted and skilled employees. Some jobs consist of software engineer, web developers, technical project/program manager, QA engineer, network engineer, system administrators, database administrators and many more with loads of responsibilities.

What is the future for Amazon?

Amazon has seen the future and surprise, surprise it involves drones. Yes, drones, Amazon have been in the works for some time now creating their very own drone delivery! Jeff Bezos, president of company Amazon wants to move his company forward to the future, with technology becoming greater and more reliable Jeff is determined to achieve the possibility of having drone delivery, delivering your package by air in just approximately 30 minutes! Wow! He believes he will have a working service and estimates this project’s completion in about 4 to 5 years give or take. In 2013 Amazon has created a working prototype that they have dubbed the “Octocopter”. The “Octocopters” are 8 propeller drones about the size of a remote controlled airplane that can carry shoebox size plastic bins containing your package. Jeff Bezos declares that this s the future of the company and delivery time.

https://your-champlain-media.tumblr.com/post/158926318804/amazone

#socialplatforms

YouTube

by Matthew Arriaga

To begin, what is “YouTube”? This popular website was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. It is a free video sharing website where people can either watch or upload videos for others to see. At first, the main idea or purpose behind the creation of this website was originally for dating. It wasn’t called “YouTube” at first, its indigenous name was “Tune In, Hook Up”, which allowed people to produce videos of themselves and post it. Afterwards, they would later on see if users were interested in “hooking up” with that particular person. Unfortunately, their concept quickly failed. However, it began growing in a different matter. On February 14th 2005, the team immediately changed the name to YouTube, it was growing at a high rate and changing the way people watch videos. It became one of the fastest growing websites on the World Wide Web! Soon afterwards, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stocks and just a year and a half later, Chen received $310 million, Hurley received $334 million and Karim receiving $66 million. The well known website became an easy access to viewers all around the world. YouTube operates on a complex algorithm made up of millions of codes. Once you search a video, you receive multiple results of videos to help what you’re looking for. One of the techniques that YouTube uses is video metadata. This involves having a title, thumbnail and a description. A thumbnail is the first image you see on the video before clicking it. This helps people see if the video is either relevant or not for the viewer. Due to YouTube’s popularity, it became not only a source of entertainment but started to create careers for people. Some people have progressed through the usage of YouTube to help with their careers. Since Google purchased YouTube, they soon applied quick advertisements before accessing the video and unfortunately a lot of users complained and were annoyed. Although, people stayed interested due to its upgrade of video quality from 720p to 1080p for a higher definition. Due to these advertisements, many gamers and broadcasters had an opportunity to earn a living by uploading videos on YouTube and receiving revenue from advertisements and support. YouTube queen Zoella, real name Zoe Sugg started off from simply filming herself doing tutorials such as applying make up and showing her different styles of clothing. Today, she owns her own company for beauty products and clothing line. This in fact proved that YouTube can be a huge influence on people’s occupations and this is only one of many. YouTube has created outrageous statistics on the Internet, such as 400 hours of footage is being uploaded to the site every minute. They say that it would take 1,700 years to watch all video content on YouTube. The website is the second largest search engine after Google and has continued to grow and attract more and more viewers every day. Since 2012, the famous website is just getting bigger and bigger, and is becoming a multi-billion dollar company. They say that in the future, nobody will be buying television subscriptions but instead will be watching YouTube videos!

#socialplatforms

Twitter: 'A Short Burst of Inconsequential Information'

By Marine Khediguian

Twitter is the social media platform where most celebrities communicate with their fans and take their feuds, important political figures appeal to their nation (Donald J. Trump is included in this category, but he is seriously just a train wreck) and breaking news spreads like wild fire. It has been one of the most important platforms in the last couple of years. A whopping 1.3 billion accounts have been created since the site has been open to the public in 2006. From that day until 2014, Twitter only knew substantial growth and increase in popularity; going from 5,000 tweets per day in 2007, to 50 million in February 2010. On December 18th 2012, the number of monthly active users went over 200 million, double of what it was barely a year ago. Finally, in 2013, they launched their new, equally popular app, Vine, which lets users post funny 6-second looping videos, separate from Twitter.

At that point, founders Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams believed their success was still on it's way to unstoppable gain. What they didn't foresee was the plateau their numbers would hit in 2015 and 2016. Even though the quantity of tweets made was still incredibly increasing, solely on the U.S. Presidential Elections of 2016, 40 million tweets were sent out before 10pm, the number of users didn't follow the curve. In fact, 44% of the accounts created on the site have never made a single tweet, and out of the 310 million active users, the company estimates 23 million are bots. Another issue with numbers, money! As of 2016, their net income was calculated at -456 million of US dollars. (Yes, that is a minus sign)

How to explain this huge drop in income and popularity for Twitter? Competition!

Social media is an important part of our lives. Especially for the younger part of our population, the need for new technology in constant change is thriving. New platforms, such as Instagram and Snapchat mainly steal the spotlight because they are regularly updating and offering new services. As an example, Snapchat started with simply having the possibility to send a picture taken in the moment, with a timer, which disappeared after being opened. Now, you can send those pictures to groups, chat with people, post pictures for 24 hours for all your friends to see, read the news, follow your favorite celebrity’s lives, and so much more! All in one app, you have everything the rest of the social media platforms offer, and even more.

In addition, the wave of new technology comes with an increase in job offers. Those opportunities are becoming more and more interesting, even to those who already have high placed jobs. Indeed, solemnly in the month of January 2016, Twitter lost its Vice President of Media to Instagram, the head of its Vine app to Google, its Vice President of Engineering, and its head of Human Resources. With all of this loss came a drop of about 50% of value in the tree months following.

Finally, although the numbers have not been very hopeful for his company, CEO Jack Dorsey is taking back his powers and accepting the new challenge! As Ben Parker would say in the movie Spiderman, “Great power comes great responsibility.”

#socialplatforms

An Amazing Inventor

by Maude Church

Steven Paul Jobs also known as Steve Jobs, was born on February 24, 1955 and passed away on October 5, 2011. Not a lot of people know but Jobs was adopted and raised by the lovely couple Paul and Clara Jobs. Jobs was one of the most known people on the planet. In his life, Jobs has done some amazing things that no one has even thought about. He was an American entrepreneur, a businessman, inventor, and an industrial designer.

After graduation high school, he went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. College was not really for him so he dropped out, but there was one class that changed his life; calligraphy development. The love of typography stayed in his life forever and it’s only at the age of 21 that him and his friend Wozniak started their company Apple. With not a lot of money the company started in Jobs family garage and they each sold things they loved to get money; Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his science calculator. In the same year, they sold their first computer know as Apple-1 for $666.66. It wasn’t the prettiest computer, but with time they improved their design and sold the improved version making it a commercial enterprise. In just five years, Apple had become the biggest manufacturer of personal computer and the second for home computer in the US.

Jobs was not the easiest person to work with, but he did try his best. For 12 years, he would go visit once a week his team to talk about every product to know what was going right and what to fix. He would invest 2,400 hours of his life or about 4 hours a week to solely build a good relationship with them.

A lot of people wonder why they called their company Apple and it’s simple. Steve Jobs revealed he was coming back from an apple farm and though that it was a fun name and not intimidating so people wouldn’t fear it. From there the Apple logo has represented knowledge. Now for the bite in the apple, there is a lot of sorties about it. The real one is that Janoff would have originally put the bite so people would not get mix up with what kind of fruit it was. From then they had a nerd joke playing on word with bite and byte.

In 1986, he purchased Pixar from George Lucas, which at the time was just a computer graphics division. When he purchased Pixar, they were only 44 employees. With the help of the big success of the world’s first computer animated movie, Toy story in 1995, two-year later they had 375 employees. Eventually, Jobs sold Pixar to Disney and focused on Apple Inc.

Jobs was not someone to share a lot of personal stuff, he went most of his life working for his company and not a lot with his family. He had a daughter named Lisa that he denied paternity in court documents. He said he was sterile; he did have any relationship with her until she was 7. When she was a teenager she went to live with him.

2003 was a bad year for Jobs; they discovered he had pancreatic cancer. A rare but operable neuroendocrine tumor. “Instead of immediately opting for surgery, chose to alter his pesco-vegetarian diet while weighing Eastern treatment options.” (Biography) For nine months he would keep postponing his surgery, making everyone at Apple's nervous. At the end, he finally took the time for surgery and a year later they were able to successful remove the pancreatic tumor. Seven year later Apple sadly announced on October 5, 2011 that co-founder Steve Jobs had passed away in Palo Alto. He died as a smart man of 56 year old who changed and inspired the world. After he died there were two movies made about him, showing all the steps he had to take to build that company from zero.

#popculture

Avatars

by Zachary Hansen

The modern world has developed to use the Internet as an international medium. Its practicalities are almost limitless. People use it for communication, economics, education and entertainment. While conversing on the world web, one can have more than just one face. How do you ask? The answer is through avatars of course. The creation of these virtual identities fascinated many people for the possibilities that are offered to them.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an avatar as “an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user in a virtual space (as in a computer game or an online shopping site) and that interacts with other objects in the space.” The appearance of an avatar is usually humanly shaped, but can also span to non-humane beings. Various games in the 1980s were the starting point of digital avatars in the virtual gaming world. Some of these games were “Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar” by Richard Garriott and “Songs from the Stars” by Norman Spinrad. The goal behind the use of avatars in games was to have the player feel more immersed within the game.

From the year 2000 to present day, the use of avatars massively exploded. Many video game companies like Xbox, PlayStation and Wii now use avatar accounts to increase and develop connectivity amongst players around the world. However, the real innovator in this field is the company Maxis. Will Wright, its creator, invented the game “Sim City” in 1989. In this game, the player is the mayor of their own city and has to manage it as various events happen in it. The game was then evolved into the first version of “Sims” released on February 4, 2000. In this version, the player acts out the life of one person in the virtual world. By March 22, 2000, about 6 million copies of the game were sold worldwide.

Within the Sims universe, the player can have more than one identity. Virtual games, which use avatars, can be an escape from reality for some people because someone can recreate himself or herself as anything they can imagine. This brings in the potential for cyber bullying, hacking and other cybercrimes. The use of avatars gives the criminal and/or bully to hide their true identity and therefore have little to no regret over their actions. There is a point to which everyone must understand the difference between a virtual world and reality.

In conclusion, the introduction of avatars to the world has helped us advance and develop public international communication. It certainly increased various facets of the gaming industry and connected gamers across the globe. However, to every innovation, there is a dark side. The use of avatars brought new methods of committing crimes. Virtual reality is just that, virtual. There is a line to which all people should watch and be careful and not cross. Avatars have become a form of power in the modern world. They give us the great power to become someone/something else entirely and we all know the saying: With great power comes great responsibility.

#popculture

Digital Lovin’

by Jeanne Rouillard

Before there were dating apps, people used newspaper. They did. Advertising in a certain newspaper meant you were looking for sex more than a serious relationship according to Fredric Neuman in his “Dating: Then and Now” article in Psychology Today. Sounds familiar? That’s because looking for love has not changed that much, it has simply digitalized. Dating will always change, but it will always stay contemporary to the generation it follows.

Although the format is not the same, there are a lot of similarities between dating in the 1950’s and now. For example, the same fears surround those types of meetings: fear of being rejected, fear of being lied to and fear of admitting to looking for someone, says Neuman. Through the years and the changes, those will always remain there, simply because being vulnerable in front of another human is hard for most of us. Most importantly for us millennials, when there is no more screen to protect us, we panic. But, those fears come from somewhere else: the unknown. Anyone could be talking to us on the other end. For all we know, your friend’s grandpa could have taken any picture on the internet and used that to reel you in. Adding to that, meeting someone could turn out to be extremely dangerous, which is why caution and common sense are a must. Even when advertising in the personal column, people can be deceiving. It is sad but true; people lie sometimes and with pictures being available to almost anyone, it is too easy to steal someone’s identity.

If the fears and the dangers are the same, what has changed? For one thing, digitalization has made our generation a lot more comfortable with our phones than with people, but it also has a practical aspect, as there is now an app that lets you know of anyone interested in a 60-foot radius. That’s right, Cerka is a service that when activated, will tell you of any users near you and will let you chat with them for 10 minutes before you must decide if you want to meet them or move on, explains Synden Hope-Johnston on his MTL Blog post about the app. It will even give you two ways they like to be approached. Instead of waiting for the next print to come out, you hope for the other to read your messages.

What about the romantic high school sweethearts? The truth is, students nowadays rarely leave high school with a partner, same goes for college, so they have to meet people elsewhere. However, there are rules that apply now that did not exist twenty years back that make the process more complicated. For instance, dating a friend’s ex is now an insult to the friendship, when it used to be normal. How else were you supposed to meet people with the same interests? Something else to keep in mind is the fact that people tend to marry later, and take more time now than they did then. Millennials search personal fulfilment and achievement more than anything else reveals Doug Norris in his analytic report on the target market. We should make place for love, and sometimes our lives just get sucked up by a surprise album by our favourite singer.

Digitalization has made everything easier; we are now able to meet someone close-by and learn what is their favorite pick-up, However, frauds and liars also have a better time. Be careful and most importantly, have fun! Even if you don’t find your romantic soulmate, maybe you’ll meet a new friend or at the very least you will have a good story to tell. Next time one of your relatives teases you about your phone, just play “Escape” by Rupert Holmes.

#popculture

From Zero to Hero: Bill Gates

by Alex Dolen

The man behind Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is no other than Bill Gates. Born October 28th, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, Gates always had a passion for computers and technology. Gates’ break to fame was in 1975 when him and Paul Allen came together in a garage and formed Micro-soft (derived from Microcomputer + software), now known as Microsoft. Over time, Microsoft began to produce more recent editions of the operating system. Despite being a University drop-out, Gates became the richest man in the world. However, Gates isn’t just credited for Windows, there’s actually a lot more than one would expect.

For example, he’s also responsible for Office, Xbox, Skype, and much, much more. Although Gates no longer directly works at Microsoft, he keeps himself busy. For the past 17 years, Bill & Melinda Gates have started a foundation that gives aid to countries in need. The foundation helped 20,000 young people afford education, which costs $1 billion. In 2010 the Gates Foundation pledged $10 billion in order to further our understanding of vaccines and distribute them to the poorest countries in the world. In 2013, $5.5 billion was invested to eliminate polio and India is now polio-free. Bill Gates currently has his own blog where he writes articles every two to three weeks about various subjects from his work in Africa to what makes a good leader. His foundation is the largest non-profit organization in the world.

Microsoft and Apple have always had a rivalry. In the early stages of Apple, Bill Gates would produce software for the Apple computers. Quite frankly Steve Jobs and Bill Gates also shared that rivalry, as they would challenge each other and always try to get that 1-up. At one point Gates even gave Apple an investment to make sure the company would remain a competitor.

Bill Gates makes a good role model as he dropped out of college but still managed to get his life together. If there is something to take from his story it would be that you need to do what makes you happy. A perfect example would be cutting off ends that could cause stress and follow your life the way you’d want to; Gates has been fascinated by computers ever since he was young and decided to make a life out of it. Now he finds happiness in helping people all around the world.

Interesting Fact: If Bill Gates were to drop a hundred dollar bill, in the time it would take him to pick it up, he’d have made that money back

#popculture

PRESS START: Welcome to the Gaming World

by Zachary Moonilal

Fifty years ago, in order to be entertained, a family would gather together on a Friday night to watch the latest episode of a television show. Skip to the present and the world of entertainment has completely shifted gears. It’s no longer just watching something; it’s now all about interacting with what you watch. Films and television are competing with a new means to accommodate everyone. This striking world is known as the gaming realm.

This type of amusement began as early as the 1970’s. “Computer Space” by Nutting Associates was the first appearance of a video game. However in 1972, Pong made its debut as the first successful commercial arcade video game. Nolan Bushnell, producer of this game, would soon become the founder of the first gaming industry: Atari. Ever since the creation of the industry, the popularity of games have been continuously sky rocketing. After such a successful form of entertainment, a plethora of industries began marketing their own consoles and games, such as: Ubisoft (1986), EA (1982) and Nintendo (1970).

All these industries have a big impact on entertainment and have forever changed the way we view and interact with things. The businesses have made its own world, which would become bigger each year. It has become a culture, a way to make sufficient money, it has created a new type of sport called eSports, there are even scholarships that include training for different types of games and not to mention that there are award shows dedicated for video games. As an addition, conferences such as E3 bring together previews for the future of video games and invite players to anticipate for what’s to come.

The demand for video games is huge. In the US alone, they make about $25 billion a year. According to AU communications, Harry Potter sold a total of $380 millions tickets at the box office but is nothing compared to Skyrim, a fantasy game that made double the amount in just one month of its launch. It is to show how great of a threat it has become to the film industry.

Today, the most common places to play video games are on the computer and consoles from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. They upgrade and create consoles on an annual basis to create a better experience for players while increasing the value of their business.

The story doesn’t stop there. Playing video games with friends meant having to go to their house and plugging in a second controller to play. Ever since the introduction to online play in the early 90’s, friends are capable of playing wherever they are. It started off as a web browser but quickly changed into servers for games to have a platform in which people worldwide could play against each other. Online also had a huge impact on the way video game competitions would be handled. There are numerous video games introducing online multiplayer that would motivate players to compete for money.

This gave birth to a new kind of sport, which would rapidly develop as electronic sports or eSports. This world invites players to stadiums in popular areas to compete for massive pool prizes of money. There are live streams, hosts and announcers; almost feels like watching a football game on television. Some of the biggest games that are played include: Dota 2, League of Legends, Overwatch and Counter Strike: GO. Since 2011, Dota 2 has made an earning of $94,814,164.45 to be exact. This is just a small part of the bigger picture.

Clearly the gaming world is heading in the right direction. Being apart of this culture, I see video games going very far. There’s a demand for them in the market and so many small and big companies are producing them at a faster rate. It has opened new doors for job opportunities and the community is bigger than it ever was. The mega gaming world is still very young and there is still so much to experience.

#moderntech

The Making of Video Games

By Kishaun Holliday-Thomside

Video games have become a focal point in today’s society, becoming a huge part of pop culture. Video games have become so popular that they have started bleeding into other mediums. This includes mediums like Film &TV. Seeing as how video games are so popular now it’s not surprising that everyone and their mother are trying to get in on the business. Giving out their ideas and opinions. Everyone’s had that moment in their life where they think they have a great idea on their hands. Good ideas are the foundation of great creations. For video game designers, a good idea can make or break the next year of their lives, because a good idea is where it all starts, an idea is the first piece of the creating a video game (“How a Game is Made” 2).

The GDD:

After you come up with the idea you must invest the next couple of weeks into mapping out the entirety of the game. Using something called the GDD (Game Design Document), the GDD is a document that allows you to fill out everything that needs to be seen by the people making the game. The GDD should describe every little piece of your game, from how it looks to how the character moves. When the game developers are creating the whole structure of the game they should be able to clearly read your GDD, making it seamlessly easy to translate your vision onto the screen (Tkach et al. 1).

Publishers:

Many people think that their ideas are good ones, they sometimes eventually find out that those ideas aren’t as good as they originally intended for them to be. Sadly, that goes the same way with the next step. After the GDD is filled out and your game developers have gotten all the information that they need to make your game a reality. You’ll have to go out and do the hard part, find a publisher. The publisher pays all the expenses of making the game, that’s everything from marketing your game to paying the game developers who create the game. They also keep most of the money in the end. It sounds easy when I put it like that but to get these publishers money you must impress them. Usually it’s done by giving them a pitch for your game. When giving your pitch, give your publishers a small test of the game. Bring in the GDD so that you can better explain your game. Maybe bring in a demo so they can know what they’re getting themselves into. If all goes well and they like the little test of the game you gave them, you should be ok and have backing from the publisher (Tkach et al. 1-2).

Game Development:

So, your game has been accepted by a publisher, that puts you in the stage of developing the game. This process begins with the TDD (Technical Design Document), the TDD is sort of a clone of the GDD, the only difference being that the TDD is vastly more in depth than the GDD. After the TDD is filled out and your lead developer has approved it you are clear to really start developing your game. A huge part of creating a game is the games engine, the engine is the heart of the game. It is the backbone of the game; the engine determines everything that happens in the game. Imagine the engine as the engine of a vehicle, the engine makes the vehicle move and is a vital part of that vehicle. now imagine the body of the vehicle as the textures and graphics of the game. Some game companies create their own engines (which is more expensive) but makes the process of designing the game easier. Most gaming companies usually just use other companies’ engines, giving them the benefit of being less expensive. Limiting their ideas to someone else’s engine (Tkach et al. 2).

Creating your game:

Using the engine of your choice, creating the game is the next process. After months of your game developers working on the textures and polygons of the game, you should have something that looks like what you intended. The next step is to bring your game into beta, usually when a game goes into beta, testing of the game begins (Tkach et al. 3).

Finishing the game:

After months of testing and searching your game for bugs and glitches, you should be nearing the launch day of your finished product. Obviously little things will still be wrong with the game, but you’ve reached the day and your game is available to the public. You have successfully made a videogame (Tkach et al. 3).

#moderntech

Entering The Virtual World

By Marina Aguirre

Nowadays, technology has evolved at an incredible speed. In the sector of entertainment, gamers are always looking forward to seeing new products, each time more performing and more interactive than the last. There is no doubt that the idea of entering a virtual world is something worth dreaming of. This is where Virtual Reality is being introduced. However, what is it exactly? Virtual reality is the recreation of a three-dimensional environment generated by a computer, which allows the user to immerge into a surreal world and interact with it. This artificial world is created by stimulating as many senses as possible to experience of actually being somewhere else.

This idea of breaking the limitations of reality as well as the development of this technologic invention may seem recent, but it is considered to have begun in the 1950’s. Although a lot of people have contributed to the creation of this concept, Morton Heilig is most of the time called out. He has invented the “Sensorama” the first interactive film in 1957. The sensorama is an enclosed booth that incorporated multiple elements such as moving fans, a rotating chair, speakers and devices that emits smells to make the viewer use all their senses. His invention would only allow one person to view the film and experience the 3D effect. This creation helped for future reference and advance in the research into the virtual reality.

When we think about the use of virtual reality, entertainment is the most obvious one. The advancement in video games and use of helmets are the most popular ones. People are getting excited to see it works and get their own to play and use at home. For example, Microsoft is releasing a new pair of glasses called hololens who would allow you to see notes, app, 3D objects and more on your walls and furniture at home. All these seem so easy, but the creation of a virtual world is so complex and demanding. The human body naturally synchronise movements with the info received but achieve synchronization in the virtual world it needs to be perfect so the human will believe its real. Time is one of many constraints of the creation of and made-up world. The need for quality images pushes the creators to work on more realistic virtual space. The more detailed a world is, the longer it will take to do and render. For example, a three-dimensional walkthrough building can take more than a year to complete. The efforts are worth the time because the results are impressive.

This technology has a huge entertainment value but you may not know that it can be applied to various different areas and do wonderful things. The virtual reality can be useful and led to new discoveries in architecture, medicine, education, arts and more. It becomes even more interesting when you think about how it could affect our society. In medicine, the trainee could use the cyberspace to practice surgeries to allow them to take risks and gain real world experience.

Although there are many concerns that comes with this type of inventions. The main problem is the motion sickness that some users could have after spending some time in the virtual world. There could also be physical problems due to not enough movement and physical activity; a problem that is often is associated to gamers and their use of the computer. Then there are ethical issues that could occur because of this type of world. For example, how does virtual criminality will be directed? Should participants that commit a crime within the virtual world and effects another person who becomes injured or traumatised by his action should be affected by the real laws? Thus, there are obviously some matter that need to be think of, but all the benefit of this technology makes it worthy.

#moderntech

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