Apple Tablet

The above title is linked to the story which is one of many O.o!


- Just one possible Image


Apparently Apple is developing a tablet that is a larger version of the the iPod touch with a few more capabilities. The Financial times has also backed this slightly and I'm beginning to wonder how I can make use of it...lol

Anyways there is talk that it could be revealed around October (Some say earlier and others later) for the Christmas season. It is rumored to be priced around $800 and to me that's not such a bad price. Hopefully its got a lot of new features ... I would prefer to have more features with that price lol.

One of the features that may determine it's size will be the screen. Some are saying a 10" touch screen and others say just under at 9.7". Either to me is a completely new interface and makes me think of 2 things, one good and the other eh, not so good.

Firstly, with a new technology of its sort more and more design aspects open up and hopefully apple will allow others to use this touchscreen capabilities in the near future. I could definitely find ways for it to improve my design engineering field of study.

Secondly would be security and damage control. With this being a larger and more delicate piece of technology not only could possible thieves see the item and be even more temped to steal it but with it having such a large touchscreen protecting it may be a hassle. I'm sure there will be plenty of ways to protect the screen via case and larger film protectors but with a much larger screen it gives a larger target for any flying objects or whatever you could think of.

All in all I can't wait to see if the rumors are true and if they are I would like to give it a go and try it for myself to see what I could get out of this newly crafted device.

- I do believe they have a little competition however. But I do not think that the capabilities of that machine could compare to what apple may have in store.

New7Wonders

The same campaigning group that after 2200 years determined a new set of the 7 Wonders of The World bring you the New 7 Wonders of Nature.

These campaigns are held worldwide and the last campaign for the 7 Wonders of The World accumulated over 100 million votes. You are able to cast your vote by going to their website (link posted above), through telephone, and by text messaging people all over the world can be a part of this historical uprising.

As for myself ::

Amazon

Black Forest

Dead Sea

Grand Canyon

Iguazu Falls

Komodo

Sundarbans

:: These were my picks! .... You should check it out as well!

Have more than a comment to say about this and much more? ...
Check out the 2 Cell community HERE!

Facebook Violations!

Okay, so Canada's Privacy Commissioner says that Facebook has multiple privacy issues that need to be taken care of. The commissioner set a "probe" to check out Facebook's privacy practices in response to a complaint received.

It appears that there are at least four main areas of concern:

• The excessive amount of personal user information given to third party application developers from all around the world.
  


• The inability of a user to delete their account, which would eliminate their personal information from Facebook servers permanently. Currently, users can only deactivate their account.
  


• The lack of information provided to users about how their friends can gain access to their personal information.
  


• The fact that personal information about non-users is collected and used within Facebook.
  

One point that was shocking to me a statement within this report said, "For example, a user is not made aware that if they enter their date of birth on their profile page, that date of birth is shared with advertisers. "

I know this happens many of times all over the place on the net but typically it is written in the fine print of their TOS(Term of Service) that you are allowing them to do this. Thus the reason they have words in bold nearby to such things telling you to READ THIS!

So from that Facebook has conjured up a statement released Thursday, the company said: "As part of our continued leadership in developing privacy tools that advance user control over their information, Facebook will soon be introducing a number of new additional privacy features to its service that we believe will address any remaining concerns the privacy commission may have."

I suppose we'll see in the upcoming future?

"Elixir of Life" Possible?

New evidence shows that life longevity may be in reach. Scientists believe that rapamycin, an antifungal agent once found on the South Pacific island not capable of being manufactured in a lab may have life-extending properties.
Rapamycin was discovered in the 1970s and is used now to help prevent the rejection of organs during transplant procedures. Rapamycin blocks the activity of an enzyme called TOR which regulates cell metabolism, cell growth and protein manufacture in response to environmental cues.
Recently scientist have reformulated this drug in order to test it on aging mice. The results were that the males life expectancy increased 28% and females 38%. The mice were given the drug when they were 20 months in age which compares to 60 years old in human years. This give opportunity to treat elderly aging patients rather than having a life-long drug plan.
Known prior was that the drug did work on yeast, worms, and flies however, this is the first successful test on a mammal. More research and testing of the drug could provide us with the first life longevity pill and maybe even give us more of a chance to cure other illnesses.

In my opinion this is a very interesting discovery. My feelings are split about this compound and it new use. On my hand I think that it is definitely something to look more into and hopefully gather knowledge from to hopefully help cure many current and future diseases. On the other hand, if the pill is a success and becomes affordable for all there might be a crisis in our future.
What if too many people are living longer? Will resources run out? Will space? I would also like to think that if people get to live longer and those former do apply that with current advances in technology that more elaborate advances would develop and outer spacing living, new sources of energy, and many more would develop.
Being the slightly factual and scientific person I am, I would like to see this compound perfected and would like to be alive to see the outcome or development of its happening.

Also check out:
BBC-Elixir of Life
or
Telegraph-Elixir of Life

Leading Social Networking Websites!

Okay, so most of reading this knows of MySpace, Facebook, and probably of Twitter. So what has the last two years been for these social networking powerhouses?

Firstly, lets look at some data showing the 2007-08 year(s) for MySpace and Facebook.

Top 5 Social Networking Websites Ranked by Market Share of U.S. Internet Visits

Rank	Name Domain	Domain	Apr-08	Mar-07	Apr-07	YoY % Change
1	Myspace	www.myspace.com	73.82%	73.59%	77.87%	-5%
2	Facebook	www.facebook.com	14.80%	14.70%	11.21%	32%
3	myYearbook	www.myyearbook.com	1.33%	1.29%	0.23%	475%
4	Bebo	www.bebo.com	1.09%	1.20%	1.25%	-13%
5	BlackPlanet	www.blackplanet.com	0.98%	0.95%	0.85%	15%

Note - data is based on a custom category of 57 of the leading social networking websites ranked by market share of U.S. visits, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context. Source: Hitwise

As you can see, from April-07 till April-08 MySpace has begun to loosen it's grip on the market share and coming into a little more power is Facebook. I personally enjoy Facebook over MySpace most of the time. A new arrival however is myYearbook, which in '07 was in the Top 25 but this year in the top 5! I can't say too much about this site being that I never used it nor know anyone that does...must not be all that great :-/... but it is climbing rungs to make it's way up the ladder with the growing social network environment.

No! ... I haven't forgotten poor little Twitter. I personally dislike almost this entire thing altogether. To me its pointless to have why not just text the person or join MySpace or Facebook! Yea some people just wanna be heard and doesn't want their information flaunted all throughout the Internet. Well I say, "Make the damn things private, or don't add more than you have to at all!"
Sigh, now that everyone knows I don't care about Twitter here are some facts:



In comparison, Twitter.com and Digg.com now control just about 0.021 percent of all web traffic in the U.S., according to the data. In terms of market share Twitter is 84th while Digg is now 85th! We can thank Twitter's growth from other social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. However I cannot forget that Oprah Winfrey Tweet! (April 17th,2009) It is not shown up there but trust that now Twitter is growing even larger!

And for all those wanting to know the most recent information.... sorry the most updated I could find with a few minutes of web browsing was the most recent yearly market share most recent monthly market shares! Watch Facebook grow!

Top 5 Social Networking Websites Ranked by Market Share of U.S. Internet Visits

Rank	Name Domain	Domain	Aug-08	July-07	Aug-07	YoY % Change
1	MySpace	www.myspace.com	67.54%	68.23%	75.04%	-10%
2	Facebook	www.facebook.com	20.56%	19.48%	13.68%	50%
3	myYearbook	www.myyearbook.com	1.65%	1.58%	0.46%	256%
4	Tagged	www.tagged.com	1.53%	1.35%	0.62%	147%
5	Bebo	www.bebo.com	0.94%	1.13%	1.38%	-32%

Source: Hitwise

And...


Source: Compete

Start of the blog!

Welcome to my blog!

What I have in store for this blog is a variety of things. I will probably add to this list however to get started I want to at least try to cover topics as broad and websites, and even particular things about them, also I would like to talk about college and I'll be more specific when the time comes via sports, politics, rampaging dragons, etc... lol. Anyways welcome to the blog and if you have an interest you would like to share feel free to email me at barger.61@gmail.com and if I'm interested I'll post my opinion of the subject or matter here!

Hope to see many people active here soon! .. p.s. - I'll probably make a corresponding website and forum for this to transfer too! .. lol...not for a little while though