Samsung Debuts its First VR Camera, the Gear 360

The Gear 360 is small, white, orb-like camera that fits in the palm of your hand and only weighs a little less than half a pound. The camera has two lenses, each of which can capture 195 degrees of HD visual, allowing the camera see 360 degrees. It has a microSD storage card up to 128 GB. The settings are easy to use, and you are able to see  preview of your image before you shoot. The final product can be shared to a Samsung Galaxy Phone, online to YouTube or Facebook, or viewed with a Gear VR headset. The camera is expected to start selling in the second quarter, yet there is no word on pricing yet. By selling the camera, they hope to spur help spur the growth of VR and 360-degree video entertainment, as well as helping them sell their Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones.
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New Crystals That Can Store Data for Billions of Years

Researchers in the UK have created crystals that can store 360 terabytes of data, which is equivalent to the storage of 22,500 basic iPhones. They take the shape of small glass discs which encodes information using a sophisticated laser in the nano structures inside fused quartz. The data is stored in 5D, as the information is translated into the height, length, width, position, and orientation (five dimensions) of the nano structures. The data can be read by special optical devices, as the structures alter the way that light travels through the glass.
They have already used these crystals to store historic documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Bible. By using this technology, we ensure that the evidence of our civilization and all that we have learned will not be forgotten. The scientists who are presenting this research are looking for industry partners so that they can further develop and commercialize their technology. 
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The Future of Virtual Assistants

All major mobile operating systems have digital personalities, such as Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google Now. However these are not true virtual personal assistants, as they can only preform simple tasks such as scheduling appointments, setting reminders, looking things up on the internet, and a few other simple tasks. They have limited capabilities, and struggle to understand things that humans would have no problem with. Maluuba, an artificial intelligence company based in Canada has partnered with artificial intelligence researcher Yoshua Bengio. In order for machines to interact better with humans, they are looking to train networks on stories written by humans, starting with children's stories, rather than documents found on the web. By tracking the characters narratives, they are hoping the system will be able to know more about what the user wants, allowing it to be more effective. This could mean your phone using GPS data to know that you like to go to the grocery store before the bank, so it could automatically bring up your shopping list or a recipe, or bringing up something work related because of an email you received the previous day, as it now understands the flow of your day.
 

Other researchers and developers are looking to create a whole team of digital experts as you would in real-life scenarios, rather than making the current virtual assistants better. They could be bankers, financial planners, personal shoppers, etc., and the companies creating these fleets of bots call them virtual personal specialists. Sentient Technologies is one such company, and they have already put one such bot out into the field on Shoes.com, which helps people buy shoes. The site uses an algorithm that uses the costumer's choices to suggest products that they may want. Mark Zuckerberg has announced that it is his personal goal to build his own true virtual assistant this year.

 

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Advanced Web Design

In this class I expect to learn computer coding.

Social Bookmarking Project

1. What's another way you can organize and store information on your computer?

You can also use social bookmarking on websites such as Diigo to organize and store information on your computer.

2. What have you learned from researching the above topics? What do you know now about these current events that you didn't know before.

After researching the topics above I have learned that even though Ebola is not in the news as much as it previously was, it is still a serious issue. I have also learned how deep bullying has gone in some schools, and want to stop it.

3. What are other social bookmarking apps/websites?

Some other social bookmarking websites are Delicious, Diigo, and StumbleUpon.

4. Will you continue to use social bookmarking?

I will continue to use social bookmarking because it is the most efficient way to bookmark websites yet.

Do Now 1/5

What I Did Over Winter Break

Over the break I went to Washington DC with my family. We visited many historical sites, museums, memorials, and monuments. We went to the Capital Building, which is shown above, and the Library of Congress on the first day that we were there. On to second day, we went to the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and multiple other sites. On the last day, I went to Arlington National Cemetery, The Air and Space Museum outside of DC. 

Next I drove to Baltimore, Maryland from Washington DC. On the first day I went to eat in the neighbor hood called Little Italy. After eating I went to the Barnes and Noble, which was once a power plant. On the second day I went to the National Aquarium, and then went to eat in the neighbor hood called Fell's Point. 

Above is a laser show in from of the Barnes and Noble.

Do Now

Seeing the commercials of the abused animals and hungry people make me think about how good my life is compared to theirs. Many people in second world countries don't have enough food and starve. Seeing people help them these people by giving them food and building schools for their children to get an education inspire me to help in some way to make our world a better place. Some people live lavish lives, while others live in dirt. While the rich people have a say in almost everything, these people don't have a say in anything. This is similar to abused animals, they don't really have a say in anything, and it is sad how we can relate animals to people on their conditions. We shouldn't be able to compared a person's life conditions to that of an animal.
My life goals can fulfill my own needs as well as helping the community. I could do this by having a good job, making money, and donating some of my money to charity to help others. Hopefully some of this money could go to helping people in second world countries as well as people in my community. In addition to giving money, I could also go out of my way to help the people by giving them the food myself, or helping build the schools, building, or even water wells.