Expansion of wifi

Beginning next month, for all you McDonald's lovers you can now grease your laptops or any other wifi device up for free. I'm talking about wifi, its free at McDonalds...how nice of them.

Good job on their part to try to get people in that place. I for one can't handle the smell, so it wont be making me come in.

My question is: When will wifi be available ANYWHERE you are and also for free? For years you've had to pay to use restaurant wifi connections but seriously its old. By now access to internet should be as available as cell phone connections are. I know optimum has "free" wifi....its nice...as long as you arent in a moving vehicle. So its basically pointless. Which is why the phone is so much more reliable.

This is one area that still needs improvement and I'm sure in under 5 years there will be a difference.

Goodbye 2000-2009

I found an awesome timeline here:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34385192/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
It documents how technology has grown throughout the years since 2000.

From 2000-2002: there was the growth of iPods, Napster and some basic web surfing on limited cell phones.
2003-2006: From what I remember and according to this time line this was probably the strongest point of the decade. We were introduced to iTunes, Skype, YouTube, and MySpace.
2007-2009: I think this part of the decade was the selfish period. I was happy with what we had from 2003-2006. But it wasn't good enough. We needed an iPhone, Facebook, On-demand apps, and Twitter.

I'm kind of sad to see how much it expanded, I liked the middle years and I'm afraid and excited for the future. Currently, I think its all lame and something new has to be developed.

The author of the article I got some of the facts from, Suzanne Choney, couldn't have sumed up the decade any better, "We cuddled up with our home DVRs, went out with our iPods and friended each other on Facebook".

It was fun.

The Ages of Text Messaging

Almost everyone text messages. Its quick, easy, and has totally killed instant messaging. Texting is the new trend in the communication world. Adults have been forced to learn how to text since thats the only way they will ever hear from their kids. Its true, we hate the phone.

In an article dealing with text messaging it stats that the average amount of text messages a teen sends each month is 2,000 and the overall average per month is 407 messages. My average between December 2008 - November 2009 was 3150. I don't text as much as I use to and I do believe its probably going to begin to decline. In today's age nothing last too long anymore...

Theres so many things to do on our phones now or maybe gadgets is a better word. The computer taught us to like typing things and now we can type where ever we are. What gets better than that? I don't know I'm excited to see what will top it off though. I can't honestly think of anything.

Cell phones have changed our world so quickly, for generations that survived without them to now feel lost without them says a lot. How weird will it be for future generations to think "wow", you didn't even have internet? Or wow you lost service? What does service even mean? Its kind of sad though, we depend SO much on technology now. No one will ever again we freed from it, you can't get away from it. We will forever be controlled.

No More Obnoxious Ads

With everything going on in the world I found an interesting blog on CNN.com.

A bill was recently passed to require tv ads to be at the same level as programs. Uh what? Who cares. I just fastforward if I can or press mute. "CALM" (Commericial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act), is just another dissapointed for advertisers. First DVRs, now, no one will be hearing their ads. Or maybe not, maybe people will think their show is still on and jump back to the TV and find an ad instead. We know when the TV volume lowers that our show is back on. Now we wont, so we will have to keep checking in. So in the long run this could potentially help the advertisers.

I hate ads, espicially since we pay for tv anyway. The more technical the world becomes the more advertisers have to quickly adjust or they loose out. Are we actually just making them stronger? Or will they begin to pull out of TV ads just like in newspapers because we have DVRs, or we wont hear slogans anymore, or how about we many people just don't watch tv anymore. Lets face it, most people don't have time for TV.

YouTube Video of the Year....

I read a small CNN.com article on YouTube.com's most viewed videos for 2009.
Would you be suprised if you knew Susan Boyle was the #1 winner?
Probably not. Her memorable video from Britain's Got Talent has been viewed over 120 million times. Not only is that amazing but this year (2009) has also been the biggest for online video according to YouTube.
Just like when we first discovered those dangerous site: MySpace and Facebook. YouTube was also part of that list. Teens ran these sites, everyone else was afraid. But for some reason it seems that everyone has converted and adjusted since 2004.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
Susan Boyle is a perfect example of how far YouTube reaches people. She was already a star on Britain's Got Talent. Without YouTube, she would have only been known to Britain. YouTube is a brilliant site and has probably been the core foundation of ditching the television.

Who won't give in to the holidays?

Just about every industry has reinvented the meaning of a holiday. They have taken the religion aspects out and besides from even that, the innocence out as well. They have trained us consumers well, with their ads and brainwashes. Christmas, has been molded into a holiday of perfection and scored according to how much those presents you recieved cost. We've allowed them, the businesses, to control basically every holiday. Holidays have lost their meanings, they've all been turned into a reason to binge shop.

Every year Christmas is rushed earlier and earlier. I usually notice it the day school starts that some Christmas decorations are mixed in with Halloween. This year, however, it was the end of August I saw Reindeer dolls in CVS. I love the holidays, but I feel like thats really killing it. As I looked through these Reindeer dolls, there was Cupid dolls mixed in. These weren't clearance items, and they're still there now too.

I realized that these dolls I saw weren't placed early by mistake, stores are trying to stimulate the holidays even earlier this year.

Businesses are taking advantage of us, they know that we are weakend from the economy. Some even say our economic problems are behind us. Ether way, even if thats true, shouldn't we be saving our money so we don't repeat the debt trend again?

I think that its scary that these ads and slogans are used to lure us into spending. They make us think that we are doing something good for others. Meanwhile, we are only hurting ourselves. Even if you can afford to spend $5,000+ on Christmas, why not cut your budget down to 2,500$? Then if and when the economy declines again, you will have an extra $2,500 stashed somewhere.

We don't have that choice though. The only choices that we have are what these stores tell us we have. I know people that already have their trees up and decorations. People this year are really craving what the holidays are known to bring. They really want to feel the happiness brought on by decorating. Stores know this, they want you to feel that feeling too. Because when your happy, everything is great and you don't care at that moment how much cash you waste in presents.

This is a dissapointing, sad, and scary situation.

Trying to keep up with the consumers

I read an interesting New York Times article about the movie industry and how its trying to keep with up with consumers. The goal is they don't want to be harmed like the music and newspapers industries have been. Netflix has, however, hurt the industry some. People want to save cash and don't really care about owning DVDs anymore.

When I was younger it use to be like a competion of who had the most CDs, DVDS or VHS tapes. But that fad quickly became uncool. We would have pride in spending 300$ on a DVD set and put it on display. Now we have nothing, how do you display a digital copy of something? You can't so it's not important to us consumers anymore.

Disney is starting something called, Keychest. Keychest really suprised me because I would think the company would loose money by doing this. It actually saves you money because Disney tracks your digital purchases. You have the ability to watch a movie on your cell phone and finish it on demand on your tv. Thats pretty cool and flexible. I really like that idea.

Hopefully, all the companies follow. So that when you purchase a movie you own the rights to it in any form. Companies want this, they want us to have a way to still display that special collectors edition or whatever they would call it. They don't want us to give up on movies no matter what form they may come in. They don't want people to stop purchasing. They want that special charm that use to drive us to buy that movie.

Why don't we care anymore? Maybe because we realized we can get it cheaper, and we have less space by not storing it in our house. I don't think its as special though because we don't physically have it. I never buy movies anymore and if I do I watch it once and thats it. So whats the point of spending that money when I can get it on demand cheaper?

Its so amazing how what use to be special to us turned into clutter and none sense. I wonder what comes after digital? Or is digital here to last? Look how fast we went from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray. When is digital going to change? How can the movie industry keep up when everything is constantly changing formats and we demand new things. I believe the only way is that we know when we purchase a movie, we own those rights for life and can get it however we want. But that option would probably come at a very expensive price for the consumer. Why would we want to pay that? We aren't the ones who care about owning it, its the movie industry that is wanting us to care.