| Why do we use technology for? Fun, entertainment, everybody else does, it is like a dare to know how to use it, we really need it? No matter which is the answer we all want to make our lives easier and save our time. I personally would really like to have a cool accessory, looking like a bracelet with a touch screen which could help me do all the housework, or at least the cooking part. This would be great. (If I would work in a company creating this accessories I would make discounts for students for sure, so that they can dedicate more time having fun and studying). This bracelet will be linked to the household items. It will like a new fashionable universal remote, with reminders and also voice warnings. And maybe we could also use it to open the garage door, the mailbox and everywhere inside the house area. Of course, it will have an attractive design, available even with Swarovski crystals and different colors. When I used to be little I imagined that in the future we would have robots doing the work for us, but now I think robots are out of date and not cool. They would be more difficult to control and would use more space than the bracelets. I think they will attract both men and women. Some people like accessories very much so for them is an extra reason to be more “trendy” and for those who dislike being accessorized they would just be the gadgets they must have to save time and energy. I don’t know how my future laptop will look like, but I’m sure it is going to be less heavy than the one I have. I think many technological “toys” will change because people like to show their creativity in this field, which I see as being a good thing. If it is more fun and not very difficult to use the new gadgets I believe these changes are positive. And I think people will get more and more used with adopting technology and not being scared of it. I hope I’m going to have a good time discovering the new creations and not spend too much time reading their user’s manuals. |
Sunday, October 14, 2007
I will like the technological accessories
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The Semantic Web - revolution of new possibilities
I had problems searching things one the World Wide Web many times. And sometimes I wondered why isn´t the computer smarter or why isn´t there any program that I can use that helps me find the information I need easier. We have these kind of problems because the words we use as hints for our searches don´t have a semantic content to our computers. Computers are not reliable when it comes to meanings.
The Semantic Web would definitely make our searches easier to get. The main characteristic of the World Wide Web it´s is universality and the links are its´ elements. Non-discrimination should also be one of its´ characteristics. Its´aim is the human consumption in the first place and secondly it is a source of databases, programs and sensor output.
For a Semantic Web to work we need the access to structured collections of information and some inference rules that they can use. There is a common knowledge representation system but it needs to work using some rules and codes and even then there are still going to be unanswerable questions. But this doesn´t scare the Semantic Web researchers. What makes the SW different is providing a language that expresses both data and rules and that allows knowledge-representations to be imported on the Web.
Sometimes we don´t get the right meanings of what the others are trying to say. This is why the SW need ontologies, understood as documents that define the relations among terms. These can solve confusions by providing equivalence relations. They also help manipulating the information.
What SW promotes is synergy, accuracy of web searches, flexibility, less time wasted, reliability. The main idea which can make it work is reducing information to get closer to what we are looking for.
Developing a SW is important because it may assist the evolution of human knowledge as a whole, using a unifying language. I hope we will have such a web really soon!
The Semantic Web would definitely make our searches easier to get. The main characteristic of the World Wide Web it´s is universality and the links are its´ elements. Non-discrimination should also be one of its´ characteristics. Its´aim is the human consumption in the first place and secondly it is a source of databases, programs and sensor output.
For a Semantic Web to work we need the access to structured collections of information and some inference rules that they can use. There is a common knowledge representation system but it needs to work using some rules and codes and even then there are still going to be unanswerable questions. But this doesn´t scare the Semantic Web researchers. What makes the SW different is providing a language that expresses both data and rules and that allows knowledge-representations to be imported on the Web.
Sometimes we don´t get the right meanings of what the others are trying to say. This is why the SW need ontologies, understood as documents that define the relations among terms. These can solve confusions by providing equivalence relations. They also help manipulating the information.
What SW promotes is synergy, accuracy of web searches, flexibility, less time wasted, reliability. The main idea which can make it work is reducing information to get closer to what we are looking for.
Developing a SW is important because it may assist the evolution of human knowledge as a whole, using a unifying language. I hope we will have such a web really soon!
The Long Tail - article by Chris Anderson
Consumers’ tastes and behaviors can surprise the marketers anytime. This happens especially when both parts realize that consumers’ tastes are not the mainstream trends. But which exactly are these trends? What the author is trying to emphasize is that some of the potential good works (movies, books…) are not widely spread because there is no certainty that they will have consumers and from this the producers bigger budgets. When the risk of not having readers, viewers, spectators exists those who want to make money are very careful.
What it is strange is the need we sometimes have to access something different than the mainstream. Anyway, hit-driven economics could not deal with everyone’s tastes. This is why there was a need for a different kind of business: Long Tail.
A long tail business works by some rules: Make everything available (mainstream and non-mainstream products), Cut the price in half. Now lower it (Prices should be according to the effort and the money invested in the process of making products available, because we all like to make a good business and some of us spend a lot of time looking for a cheaper and qualitative opition), Help me find it (suggesting what else we could listen, customizing our options). These rules follow a certain logic which should be the logic of any entertainment business.
Another problem discussed in the article, which is, was and it is going tp be actual for a long time is related to our choice when it comes to music. Do we buy the original CDs´, the pirated ones, buy songs online or we download it for free? In this, the retail music suffers the biggest loses because now there are lots of networks which provide us music for free. I think everyone downloaded music or movies illegally at least once from one of these kind of networks and had the experience of low quality, being something else than what they were looking for, no sound, taking ages or other disadvantages like this. So, when it comes to this it is our choice how much money, time or patience we want to invest.
What it is strange is the need we sometimes have to access something different than the mainstream. Anyway, hit-driven economics could not deal with everyone’s tastes. This is why there was a need for a different kind of business: Long Tail.
A long tail business works by some rules: Make everything available (mainstream and non-mainstream products), Cut the price in half. Now lower it (Prices should be according to the effort and the money invested in the process of making products available, because we all like to make a good business and some of us spend a lot of time looking for a cheaper and qualitative opition), Help me find it (suggesting what else we could listen, customizing our options). These rules follow a certain logic which should be the logic of any entertainment business.
Another problem discussed in the article, which is, was and it is going tp be actual for a long time is related to our choice when it comes to music. Do we buy the original CDs´, the pirated ones, buy songs online or we download it for free? In this, the retail music suffers the biggest loses because now there are lots of networks which provide us music for free. I think everyone downloaded music or movies illegally at least once from one of these kind of networks and had the experience of low quality, being something else than what they were looking for, no sound, taking ages or other disadvantages like this. So, when it comes to this it is our choice how much money, time or patience we want to invest.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Romania´s day in Jönköping
The presentation of our country was very good. We (Andra, Cristi, Mihai, Laurentiu and me) managed to show people that we have a beautiful country with lots of places worth visiting. We also offered people some traditional food, but only some dishes that are not so complicated to cook. The complicated ones are also a reason why people should visit our country. We also told people the real story of Dracula (who is just a character created by Bram Stoker, who was inspired by the name of Vlad The Impaler - also called Draculea, one of the voievods of the sixteenth century) and that they don´t need to wear garlic in their pokets when they come to Romania. It was fun! Here you can see some photos from the event http://www.flickr.com/gp/11293052@N04/36Yr9j
It´s weekend
Today I finished recording for the 50th time my presentation for my Tehnological Autobiography. (Chris, thanks for you help).What a relieve. I had school every day this week and I think is was the most busy week of all the weeks spent in Jönköping. I´m a bit tired, but I´m still going out tonight at Akademien for tacos and probably also in a club because today it is Tukka´s (Finland) and Mattew´s (Belgium) birthday (they live with me in Vilhelmsro). This weekend I have to study for my Swedish exam and I have to continue reading ``The Inmates are Running the Asylum`` and I definitely have to clean up my room.
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