Share my Blog Posts

I think when anyone ever starts a blog it is because they want to write what they are passionate about. When I started this blog, I chose a topic that I  loved and also knowledgeable about. I wanted to write what I knew and hopefully reach out to the people with the same amount of passion and be able to educate my readers on certain topics.

To accomplish my goal, my blog has to reach out to the masses. In order for me to do that, I need people to share my posts so others can see and read what I write. The best way for my blog to circulate is by linking my blog on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I think most people will either have an account from these two sites, which then will probably equate to the most social capital for each individual. These social media sites allow easy share and link to my posts which will be great for my blog.

So go on your Facebook and Twitter and start linking my blogs.

Breaking Bad

I decided to use a scene from Breaking Bad, where Skyler decides to call Jesse Pinkman, to find out who he is. When she calls and gets the answering machine, gets the unexpected. I think this scene is hilarious just because of  what Jesse records .

Understanding how to use “goanimate” was pretty simple. I used Flash before and it is just like it but on easy mode. Because I have used Flash before, it was kind of frustrating how limited I was on doing certain things I wanted my video to do. However it was an easy video to do, so I can not complain.

Yo yo yo, 148, 3 to the 3 to the 6 to the 9. Representin’ the ABQ. What up Biatch! Leave it at the tone.

Here is the orignial scene from Breaking Bad

Here is the recreated scene I made.

http://goanimate.com/videos/0pBydL6bjJTY?utm_source=linkshare&utm_medium=linkshare&utm_campaign=usercontent

Mobile Wallet: Yay or Nay?

Recently Apple came out with their own mobile payment system called Apple Pay. If you didn’t know, Google have also came out with their own in 2011 called Google Wallet. But like any mobile technology it takes Apple to start a new trend with their powerful status. I am here to tell you a little about the technology and if it is worth it in my personal opinion.

Lets start off by seeing what it does on its most basic level. The user first sets up their mobile wallet by inputting the credit card information on their mobile wallet. It is that simple and it is ready to use. All the user now has to do is find a merchant who accepts mobile pay, make sure their NFC is on (only for Android users) and just tap your phone on the payment system.

I recently got to experience both payment systems and I have to say I like Apple Pay a lot more due to the ease of use. One just has to tap the back of the phone on the top while Android phones have to tap on the middle back. While both are easy to use, just the ergonomic of using an Apple phone is far greater.

One thing Google Wallet has an edge over Apple pay is the multiple functionality aside from using your phone to pay the register. Google Wallet allows you to transfer money to people and input store loyalty cards.

If you are the person who values security, merchants can never see your credit card information because the mobile wallet gives the merchant a virtual one. Also if you ever lose your phone, the hacker would need your fingerprint or your pin number. With Google Wallet you can log on from your computer and delete the information on your phone (not quite sure about the iPhone). Overall it is pretty great, however many retailers at this time do not accept mobile payment. If you are looking to eliminate carrying your credit cards around, this is not for you at the moment. That might change in the future. Who knows?

Due to the amount of information not covered, below are links to both Google’s and Apple’s webpage on their respective mobile pay, for you to read up more on it .

Google: http://bit.ly/1q3PBzD

Apple: http://bit.ly/1AQvGHJ

Creative Commons

This picture was taken from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Android_Lollipop_Logo.jpg. This picture is legal to use for my blog. To know if it is legal I decided to review the “Fair Use Checklist” to see if it complies with what is asked. First is the “purpose” of using this picture. I think it is favoring fair use because I am using it as a news reporting purpose. This blog is to present news of different technology and the picture is showing Android Lollipop which is the new mobile operating system that is coming out. Second on the checklist is the “nature”. It is published work which was uploaded onto a Wikipedia page.  Third is the “amount”. It complies with the “portion used is not central or significant to entire work. The picture is not my whole blog post it is just to show something more to my readers. Last on the checklist is the “effect”. It fits the “no significant effect on the market or potential market for copyrighted work”. I am not stealing the picture as my own work and it follows the criteria of the checklist. I am safe to use this work and hopefully no one comes after me for stealing the picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandma Find the Internet

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/grandma-finds-the-internet

The meme that I decided to use that is most beneficial to my blog is “Grandma Finds the Internet”. If you have never come across this meme before, it is about a grandma who makes comments and questions about the use of the internet. For example a famous line is “Do they deliver e-mails on Sunday? It represents the grandma not knowing about the internet and thinking email is like regular mail and has to be delivered by someone.

If you have not already guessed, technology and internet really goes hand in hand. The internet is an old technology now and for older generations it is harder for them to really know how to use and even know what the internet is. In this day and age technology is rapidly changing and many are unaware or misinformed about newer technology. Instead of “Grandma Finds the Internet”, it will be “Grandma Finds the Smartphone” or “Grandma finds the Smartwatch”. This meme is a representation of what I am trying to accomplish. With this blog hopefully readers will be informed and know about the newest technology. They can then be with the time and be able to use what they read. Hopefully my readers wont be the ones peg as “Grandma Finds the Internet”. No one liked being laughed at.

Social Meda

In this day and age social media is everything. Every successful business and new businesses has seen the power of social media, and is important to them to have a social media page with many followers. With followers come stable customers, and with followers come free publicity. The more followers one has it gives more credibility to a business and will  likely garner more followers.

I am not the exception and having a strong social media presence can help my blog greatly. For my blog, I do not think Facebook would help me greatly, however I do think Twitter will be the best. To my followers, who has Twitter, help me promote my blog. Whenever a new blog is posted, it would be amazing if everyone tweeted it out and put the hashtag “#everydaytech1” , “#technology” and along with our Twitter handle. By tweeting a link to my blog with the hashtag and the Twitter handle, all your followers will see the link to my blog and may click on it to read it. If they like it then they may follow our Twitter page and then will see updates of when we post a new blog. Putting a hashtag is critical to our success. Others who are searching a specific hashtag, like “technology” or anything else, will come across your tweets because of the hastag, which may lead to them stumbling onto our blog site.

Please tweet, tweet and tweet. It will help us gain popularity and hopefully a cult following!!

 

The New Revamp Tesla Model S

Elon Musk constantly keeps consumers on their toes. There is nothing stopping him from innovating and changing the market year in and year out. October 1st Elon Musk tweeted  “About time to unveil the D and something else”. This left many wondering what the “D” meant. Aside from the provocative nature of the tweet, many thought it might be an unveiling of a brand new electric vehicle.

What was unveiled was an upgrade to their existing electric vehicle line, the Model S. You can read all about the upgrade at the Tesla blog site, but I will be mentioning what stands out to me the most.

Many of you are wondering what the “D” stands for. Well the “D” is for “dual”. All new Model S will feature dual electric motors. As stated on their blog, this will help with traction, and a better driving experience. This feature is nice however this is not even the best feature. The new Model S has better acceleration and autopilot. The high end model, P85Dm, can go from 0 to 60 mph in just 3.2 seconds.  That is right, 3.2 seconds. If anyone has doubts about the strength of an electric vehicle, Elon Musk just silenced the critics. While this is great and all, I think the news worthy feature is the autopilot. It comes with many safety features to avoid collisions. What the autopilot can do is it will steer the car, change speed as it detects speed signs and change lanes with the driver using the turn signal. One thing Tesla noted is that this is not a driver-less car and the driver is still responsible. Now this is extremely cool. No car manufacturer has ever done anything like this. For me, it makes the car that much more valuable. I can imagine myself taking a roadtrip and not having to drive the car myself when on a long highway.

Elon Musk continues to innovate different markets and he has done the same again. I honestly cannot wait to see what he brings out next. To show you the new Model S, below you can see a video  by “SlashGear” who has recorded test driving the new “Tesla Model S P85D”.

Screencast

http://www.screencast.com/t/ZlgTO3qRz

Screencasting is by far my favorite tool to use compared to “Audaticty” “Pixlr” and setting up this blog.  Screencasting is such a easy concept to understand and their is not much to it. It is simply recording what is on your screen. It is vastly different from all the other tools because it is not based on creativity where one can edit to create something new. “Jing” is not like other softwares where you say to yourself “where do I start?”, because it does not have many features to offer other than screencast and uploading your file. Therefore Jing is extremely easy to learn.

I found this software quite interesting because I always wondered how people recorded their computer screen. I knew they used some sort of software but did not know which one. I wonder if they use Jing? I have not used any other screencasting software, however Jing is extremely easy to use. One gripe I have with Jing is having that sun icon up top. Whenever I had multiple tabs open on Google Chrome and wanted to close it, the sun would block the exit button and I had to maneuver around it.

Creating this screencast caused me the most trouble, not because Jing was hard to use, but because I had to speak. I had to this screencast multiple times due to stumbling on my words and not being prepared on what I wanted to speak about. It felt like giving a presentation to the class just because anyone can see what I record. That put a little pressure on me and made me a little nervous, but definitely not as much as presenting in front of a real audience.

I think knowing how to screenscast and understanding the concept is extremely important. I know that if one works for a large company many times an employee will have to screencast to share information with other employees.  If I ever want to set up something that involves someone seeing my computer screen, I now have this tool at my disposal. I think this tool will be useful giving tutorials on how to do or just sharing something interesting that one does on their computer. Overall I am happy to learn about Jing and screencasting.

Commercial

projecthttps://soundcloud.com/cedric-wong-1/assignment-music-project

First of all, I decided to use Audacity as my music editing choice. Let me say, I had an extremely hard time in the beginning when using this software. I tried to do something with my audio clips, however every function I tried using either grayed out or would not work. However after many hours and help from my sister, I finally found out what I was doing wrong. Apparently you have to make sure you stop the audio completely before you can make any changes to the audio clip. Audacity does not tell you this and I wish they did. It would of stopped a lot of my headaches. After figuring this out, Audacity became something fun and easy to use. It was extremely entertaining changing my audio clips using the many functions likes cutting, fading, crossing and etc. It was important to learn to press and mute the songs when you have more than 1 song on the dashboard. One obstacle I had when putting my voice and another song together, was that the song was extremely loud and it was drowning my voice. It took some time to find out what effect will lower the song. If you are wondering how to do this, the effect is called “amplification”.

I think my audio came out pretty well, however I hate how my voice sounds. The recording was a little iffy and did not know how to make my recording sound better without a lot of background noise. Also blending two songs together is extremely hard because not all songs can sound well next to another song. It takes some time to find a good song to pair with another.After figuring out that I need to stop my audio completely to put different effects on my songs, Audacity became easy to use. I would definitely recommend others to try it out.

Creating a Banner

Creating a banner for this website was both easy and hard at the same time. I have never used a photo editing software before. The only one I have ever used is probably “paint” (the one that comes with windows). First off, I think Pixlr makes it really easy to start using where it is self-intuitive about uploading a picture on a specific size. Using the tools on the tool bar is easy. It took me less than 2 seconds to figure out what each one does.  Also the different types of editing features are things I am extremely familiar with, if not most are self-explanatory in the meaning of the word. Therefore it was easy to play around with it and change my picture however I like.

However once you get past that point, it gets a lot more complicated, but the tools are fun to work with. One tool I hate and loved was the wand tool. When you get it right and crop the picture it is satisfying bringing part of any image and fusing it with another. When I started using the wand tool, nothing would go right. I cropped parts of the picture and I would get the background too and not just the object. Because my pictures were a lot bigger than my banner, I had to shrink to the correct size in order for my object to fit how I wanted to. While this was pretty easy to do, I had to do it multiple times to find the right shrinkage.

Overall, I would definitely use Pixlr again. I always wanted to crop images and place it on another one. I have finally achieved that. Pixlr is my go to tool now to edit pictures. It has much functionality where it will come in handy when I want to edit pictures. I can now edit my friends into whatever picture I want.   Hopefully I will use Pixlr again to spruce up this blog.