Blog Post: Siri and Google Voice

Nowadays we could see a lot of new things coming up in the market, and the most common one would be gadgets. Gadgets now are mostly smartphones, and when we talk about smartphone, the first phone that pop up in my head would be, iPhone! What does iPhone have that others phone doesn't have? Siri ! But notice that 'she' can't always understand what you 're saying, not only Siri, even Google voice doesn't understand sometimes. And now there's an experiment of Google voice and Siri which is, this person he tell Siri to read a short paragraph of texts, and he record it down. After that, he press on the microphone in Google Voice and just play the voice clip that he just recorded from Siri. And now, Google voice would listen and read out the text that she/he heard from the Siri. And of course, Google voice won't show all the exact words that he/she'd heard because, they're not perfect, they're convenient when you want them to do something for you, but reading a paragraph won't work out. This guy had tried this more than 10 times, at the end, its not even a understandable paragraph anymore, basically it doesn't make sense anymore, and when you watch the video, it would be funny because, they both 'smart assistance' also make mistakes! and this mistake is not just a little bit, like I mentioned before, its no longer understandable by human, probably they understand themselves  who knows? 

Major Concept:

Watch the video above, it is just very funny when you see two smart assistance from smart phone and Google are making a lot of mistakes. Even though they're very smart, which is when you order them to do something  they did it for you automatically which you would think its very cool, yes they're coll but they're not always perfect, try to do what this you've done in the video.

          

Advantage & Disadvantages:

Its good to have Siri and Google voice, they can do whatever we want to do without pressing anything but just one button which is very convenient  But they're not good because as what this article is all about, they're not as perfect as human, basically they're just robot, so they do make mistakes which is irritating if you're in the hurry of doing something such as ordering Siri to "open notepad " to write down important things that someone said to you, when Siri doesn't understand, they wouldn't do whatever you want them to do which is very annoying. 

Question:

Siri and Google voices are both cool! but I don't understand how does people come up with these robot ? Didn't the engineer have to insert tons and tons of words and vocab into that robot just for this? Isn't it a waste of time and energy? 

Citation:

Kleinman, Alexis. "Siri vs. Google Voice Experiment: What Happens When Siri And Google Voice Talk To Each Other?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 27 Apr. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/27/siri-google-voice_n_3165924.html>.

EARTH DAY 2013

REDUCE

What is reducing? Reducing  means reducing your consumption or buying less. You don’t have to worry if you buy less or ‘use’ ‘less’  because you can reuse them later on! which save a lot of money.

Benefits

Its similar to the benefits or recycling, but the main points are:

•  Prevents pollution caused by reducing the need to harvest new raw materials;
•  Saves energy and especially MONEY.
• Reduces the amount of wastes! If you buy a lot you might throw them when they get older which would end up with tons of garbages either in your cabinet or the corner of your room.
• Allows products to be used to their fullest extent.

For example:

• Buy things that doesn’t use a lot of plastics or things that are not recyclable.
• Buy only things that you think you really need.
•  You can walk with your friends, biking, taking a bus (since many people are in one car) instead of driving a car. You can have fun with your friends too while walking and talking.
• Have a compost bin at home so that things inside would decompose, and you won’t have to throw it but you can use it for soil (fertilizer).
• You can use E-copies instead of hard copies such as books, magazines, etc that needs to use papers from the tree!
• Save energy such as turning off the lights every time you leave your room or unplug plugs that aren’t using at the moment.
• Save water such as  turning off the faucet while you brush your teeth, while you’re washing yourself with soap.
• Save water by keeping the used water for toilet, cleaning the floor, or for plants.

So after you reduce whatever you’re reducing, you’re actually saving them for the next process which is ‘reuse'. By doing this first step, you won’t have to spend a lot of your money and you can also stop yourself from buying too much things!


                                                                         REUSE

What is reuse? To reuse now is s to use an item again after it has been used. Basically whenever you finished using a thing, you would throw it away but these wastes are actually useful in some other ways too, it has its own benefits. By doing this, it helped time and especially “money”. Everything cost money, so why not start reusing things from now on?

Benefits

• You use less energy to reuse things you want to use again.
• Manufacturing in factory is no need for reuse in common.
• It reduce pollution and waste.
• It increase the savings such as money, energy, time.

What are the things that are reusable?

Carrier bags and twist ties.

• Plastic cost a lot of global warming, so reuse for bin bags in the house would be good.
• Paper bags can be use for  wrapping gifts, making cover pages for book etc. (DIY)
• Twist ties can be used to wrap the loose things together such as computer wires.

Envelopes

• Carefully open the envelopes can let you reuse it again by sticking up new information such as names and address on the top of the envelope.
• Reuse as scrap papers.

Jars and pots

• Clean the jars or pots by putting something else into the jar for example:
• Things like candie(s) can be in the jar.
• Its easier to organize them, and it's also saving!
• You don’t need to buy new container for candies.

Newspaper, cardboard and bubble wrap

• Use for packing stuff when you’re moving house.

Old clothes

• can be made into other textile items such as cushion covers or teapot cosies.

Packaging

• Such as foil and egg cartons can be donated to schools and nurseries, where they can be use in art and craft projects.

Scrap paper

• Use for writing notes or calculate math problems.

Used wood

• Can be used as making a house for you animal, a little box, decoration (walls), or even creating fire when you’re going to the camp.

It’s not just reusing it because when you reused already and you think it’s time to throw it away (too old, or damaged enough to throw away), you can still do another step which is recycle it! Isn’t that ‘ two in one’ very helpful to our earth?

RECYCLE

What is recycle? Recycle is a process to change materials (waste) into new products of potentially useful materials; and there are steps that you could follow to recycle things:

Step 1 Collection and Processing

• Collect recyclables including:
• Curbside collection
• Drop-off centers, and deposit
• Refund programs

• After collection, send those recyclables to:
• recovery facility to be 1. sorted 2. cleaned 3.processed into materials that are useable.
• Recyclables’ prices goes up and down depends on the supply and demands, so don’t give up if the price is too low.

Step 2 Manufacturing

• More and more of today's products are being manufactured with recycled content. Common household items that contain recycled materials include:
• A lot of products are being manufactured with recycled content such as the common household items:
• Newspapers and Paper towel
• Aluminum, plastic, and glass soft drink containers
• Steel cans
• Plastic laundry detergent bottles

• Recycled things are also being used with new ways too.

Step 3 Purchasing New Products Made From Recycled Materials:

• Shop for things that are able to be recycled or easily recycled.
• Nowadays we can also see malls using paper bags instead of plastic bags.

Here are some of the terms used:

• Recycled-content product:
• This tells you that, the product is manufactured from the recycled materials
•  Post Consumer content:

• This is similar to recycled-content product, but the materials are collected from consumers or business through the recycling program.
•  Recyclable product:
• This one are the products that can be collected, processed and manufactured into new products after reuse (which is pretty good).
• It doesn't  necessarily have recycled materials included.
• Check local recycling program before you buy the products.

Benefits

·         The amount of waste sent to landfills and incinerators would reduce.

·         It can keep natural sources such as timber, water, minerals, and energy.

·         Reduce the causes of pollution by no need of  collect new materials.

·         Reduces greenhouse gas emissions such as global warming that people are worried nowadays.

·         Help the future generations for good environment.

By recycling, the factories won’t have to collect new materials for their products which won’t cost money and so do energy. So Let’s do this now shall we?

Blog Post: Files and its copyrights in the worldwide internet

           


There are many things that we could see in the internet such as songs, movies, video clips, images, everything that want to have is in the internet. Just like what I do most of the time, sometimes when I want to watch some drama myself, I always watch online or even download it, but I never notice or think about where does the file come from and is it legal to download. I think that it is okay to let internet users download things like music they want to listen, images they want to save, he drama that people like to watch only IF they put credits such as where does the file originally come from, in another word, copy rights. Basically you're 'stealing' if you didn't put the copyrights. Sometimes we could see some videos from different owner, and probably you just don't know who is the one that really owns this file. Its bad for both the owner and the viewer because the owner might not want their video stolen from other people. I always check the video clips like piano tutorials or piano covers, and of course they'll play the same songs but in the description, they always tell the viewer where did they get the sheet music from, and if they transcript the song themselves they wouldn't say its from me but instead they would post a link saying that they got inspired by this user in YouTube and if the viewers want to watch more videos from his 'own' channel then subscribe and he/she does also mentioned to subscribe the user that he/she got the sheet / inspiration from; which is good, they did the copyrights and they put credits and everything .

Major Concept:

Basically the whole article is just about the 'copyrights'. If you didn't have any copyrights when you upload files, it could be illegal. For an example, drama that is categorized in episodes, there must be copyrights from the company of the channel that plays this drama and the company of this drama. Not only videos, and so do the images, musics, etc. 'Copyrights' is just respecting the owner otherwise, the owner could actually sue you for stealing. 

Advantages & Disadvantages:

It is good that people put copyrights because if you put it, the owner of the file won't be either aggressive or irritating and just by putting the copyrights, we can watch tons and tons of videos online! which is good for those people that YouTube every day.

It is bad because because of that, people start to not buy the real version of either songs, drama, magazine etc... everything that are download-able ! So it would be bad for those singers or actress.

Question:
Why does people still don't do copyrights or credits when they upload things online? Whatever I've downloaded before were mostly like that...

Citation:
Hill, Amelia. "Internet Users Unaware of Illegal Downloading." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 21 Apr. 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2013. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/22/internet-users-unaware-illegal-downloading>.

Blog Post: Apple should have some shortcuts

There are lots of smartphones nowadays from many different brands such as Apple ( the most famous one) then Samsung, Sony, HTC etc. The difference between iPhone and Samsung is that one has wider screen and one has smaller screen but some people prefer to have perfect screen size for their "one-hand" but some want to have big screen in order to see a bigger things in their phone, its up to them and its their choice, but one thing that someone in the internet had concern about is the shortcuts. 

For the shortcuts in Samsung, you can just swipe the screen at the top part of the screen, it'll show every shortcuts such as WiFi, airplane mode, Profile like sounds and more; Not only Samsung have those shortcuts, even Sony has it. Basically only iPhone doesn't and that is the biggest problem for Apple. For iPhone users they have to go to setting and set everything such as profile, sound, airplane mode, WiFi everything, basically there are really less shortcuts. In the video above it shows some concept iOS7 which include more shortcuts (not only iPhone but so do the iPads). In the video it shows many shortcuts on the lock screen basically, without swiping the "slide to unlock", you can just click the shortcut for camera at the bottom right and you could change into other shortcuts, not just camera. And also at the top of the screen. (look at the picture below).

                         

Just by clicking the camera icon, you can change/switch your shortcut to something else too such as phone  calling etc. 

Other than those shortcut in the lock screen, there are also other shortcuts for you to open an app without clicking "Into" the app itself. Example music, when you're playing music, you don't want to click in and click stop or whatever. In the picture below it shows that just by double click the music itself, it'll show up a shortcut for you to either stop, play, next etc to your music. Not only music but also calenders, app store (update apps), and also quick reply. When I say quick reply it means that whenever there's a message popped up on the screen, not sliding to open the app and answer anymore but immediately pop up a place for you to just answer and just send back.  (look a the pictures below).

Another shortcuts will be for the setting. The old style of setting is like, you have to click setting and it'll show a list of stuff that you want to adjust with small icons, but the new one would be what you see in the picture below. The icon became bigger, and you can exit easily. 

Last shortcut would be "double click" the button on the phone. When you double click it, you can view all the apps and album email whatever is opened. Before when you double click it it'll show you all the things you opened too but this time it'll show you with a big picture as you can see in the picture below again. :) These shortcuts are pretty cool, easy and quick ! ;)

Major Concept:
All smartphones should have shortcuts that is easy for the users to adjust whatever they want to change etc. Samsung and all other smartphones can go to the setting place just by swiping the screen, and it'll show those "main" settings that are mostly used such as Profile, sound, airplane, do not disturb, message etc. BUT not iOS. iOS got a shortcut only for camera at the lock screen, so now someone had made a concept of how might the iOS7 change. Probably lots of shortcuts as what you guys can see above (ex: view opened apps, quick reply, quick setting etc). You can set many things even before you swipe the "slide here to unlock". Basically, this article is talking about an idea of how might iOS 7 change in the future "with convenient shortcuts".

Advantages & Disadvantages:
It is good to have lots of shortcuts in the new iOS because all other smartphones or tablets had it already, why not iOS? And yes it is annoying to unlock your phone, click setting an find the icon that has airplane just change your phone to "airplane" mode. So yes it would be quicker and a lot more convenient to have those shortcuts!
Its disadvantage would be messy. When those shortcuts appeared in your iPhone or iPad because everything  would be showing with big images as you can see in the picture or video above. So for those people who don't like big images, or icon they might think it as becoming very messy and not organize.

Question: I still have question for the part that says "quick reply" in the video. When there's a message popped up, it appeared a thing for you to write whatever you want to reply, but the problem is, they didn't even show what message did the other person had send to you; they just let you reply immediately -_- that's very weird.

Citation:
"Here Are Some Changes Apple Should Make To The IPhone's Software." Business Insider. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2013. <http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-some-changes-apple-should-make-to-the-iphones-software-2013-4>.