Last week on April 22nd, various countries came together to celebrate Earth Day. With the use of technology on the rise, there has been a decrease in paper waste, but an increase in electronic waste. Tech giant Apple released an ad promoting the use of solar technology, reinforcing the fact that all of their data centers are 100% fueled by renewable energy. The ad shows a solar field that Apple uses to source it’s energy and reads in large font: “There are some ideas we want every company to copy.” While the message Apple is sending about renewable energy is a good one, it is clear that they are mocking their well-known rival, Samsung. In 2011 Apple sued Samsung for copying iPhone and iPad features and thus, infringing on Apple patents. Apple asked for a $380 million settlement while Samsung was willing to offer $52 million. In the end, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple $290 million in damages. The recent Earth day ad is causing a lot of buzz. Apple made a bold move in passively sending this message not only to Samsung, but also to all other mobile device companies. The detailed ad reads: “There’s one area where we actually encourage others to imitate us. Because when everyone makes the environment a priority, we all benefit. We’d be more than happy to see every data center fuelled by 100% renewable energy sources. And we eagerly await the day when every product is made without the harmful toxins we have removed from ours. Of course we know we can continue to do better. We’ve set some pretty ambitious goals for reducing our impact on climate change, making our products with greener materials and conserving our planet’s limited resources. So the next time we come across a great idea that can help leave the world better than we found it, we look forward to sharing.” While people are talking about how Apple made a dig at Samsung in this ad, Samsung is not so innocent either. You can check out a recent commercial here where they compare the iPhone to the Galaxy Note 3, highlighting everything the Galaxy has and the iPhone does not. As Apple and Samsung repeatedly make digs at one another, they continue to release great products. They are each working to even out the playing field and give each other a run for their money.
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One minute seems to be an insignificant amount of time. However, in terms of how much data is created, there’s a great deal going on. With the global Internet population growing 14.3% over the last three years to 2.4 billion people, the world’s data pool is expanding at massive rates with every click, share or like. Let’s see what goes on in one minute: - Pandora users listen to 61,141 hours of music. - Twitter users tweet 277,000 times. - Facebook users share 2,460,000 pieces of content. - Google receives over 4,000,000 search queries. - Email users send 204,000,000 messages. Is your yard looking a little bland? Spring is the perfect time to test out your green thumb with a bit of gardening. Make sure you are fully prepared by checking out TheFind’s blog posts on helpful gardening tips. Whether you are looking for gardening tips and tools, striving to be eco-friendly or want to garden with your kids, TheFind has got you covered. Check out other helpful tips like these on TheFind’s Blog. Shop for all your gardening tools at www.thefind.com. Today there are over 1.8 billion people between the ages of 10 and 24. That’s a larger youth population than at any other point in our history. They’re all glued to the TV, playing their video games and deciding where to hang their new Justin Bieber poster – right? Wrong. Okay, maybe that’s your kid, but there are some amazing young minds out there that have already proven that the world’s future could in fact be a whole lot brighter than the sight of an Xbox controller covered in Hot Cheeto dust. California boy Shubham Banerjee is a seventh grade whiz kid who used his Legos to build a braille printer. Typically costing around $2,000, Banerjee’s model costs $350 (for the Legos and a minimal toolkit from Home Depot), making the technology more affordable and available to the blind community. Kids are showing grownups easy and practical ways to save money more often than you’d think. Fourteen-year-old Suvir Mirchandani of Pittsburgh published a study that demonstrated how the U.S. government could save 234 million dollars a year if they simply changed their font type. By switching to Garamond, a font that uses thinner strokes for its letter, less ink would be used. The Government Printing Office has taken Mirchandi’s work under review. Kids are also finding new ways to use technology in everyday life. High school students Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson have had it up to here with non-cooperative condiments. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. The waitress brings you that nice juicy burger, you grab the ketchup bottle as your mouth salivates and the ketchup comes out in a blast of watery slop. Not ideal. The boys used CAD/CAM software to engineer a cap that separates the liquid from the actual ketchup. While this isn’t the cure for cancer, it’s still incredibly exciting and resourceful. These kids are using tools available to the average student to create amazing things – imagine what they could do if we decided to further invest in their abilities and learning opportunities. By supporting STEM educations programs like Project Lead the Way or Goldie Blox, a company that creates toys to stimulate future innovators and break down gender divides in the STEM field, we can see the number of young inventors and inspiring creations multiply. From Easter egg decorating parties to family gatherings, ScatterShow is the perfect tool for recapping last weekend’s Easter festivities in an interactive photo slideshow. Designed for photography enthusiasts, ScatterShow provides a 3-step approach for users looking to showcase and store their pictures – simply select your photos, choose your template and arrange your photos. You can even liven up your slideshow by adding background images, visual effects and music and easily share via Facebook, YouTube or any HTML-5 enabled website. For more information on ScatterShow, visit http://scattershow.smithmicro.com/. Whether you are looking for fun Easter activities to fill the day, gadgets to fill Easter baskets or tips for celebrating in an eco-friendly fashion, TheFind can help you out. Check out TheFind’s blog posts on Easter tips including kid-friendly activities, Easter gadgets and eco-friendly baskets to help you have the best Easter celebration. Check out other helpful tips like these on TheFind’s Blog. Shop for all your Easter products at www.thefind.com. With Coachella Weekend One over, the season of Music Festivals is in full swing. In the next couple months the U.S. will see dozens of exciting concerts that cater to a variety of tastes and preferences. Though there’s still time to scrounge up a Coachella Weekend Two ticket and head down to Indio Valley where you can’t tell if it’s the bass or the heat that has got your head thumping, we thought we’d highlight some of the other upcoming music fests this spring. If you’re thinking, “Bro, Coachella is awesome, but I want more lights and electronic music” you should check out Electric Daisy Carnival or EDC as the kids call it. The Las Vegas fest has been sold out, but you can still get tickets to see Calvin Harris, Bassnectar and other EDM masters at EDC: New York. What do I wear? Infinite bracelets made out of plastic beads, tutus and anything Lady Gaga would approve of. If you’re thinking, “I just want to be the music, man” Joshua Tree is the festival for you. It’s a place where the lines between performers and audience members is blurred and the website dictates, “Music is the soul of life”. You might not know any of the bands, but you might leave as a member of one or more of them. What should I wear? Let your spirit animal be your guide. If you’re thinking, “Too many teenagers – I can’t handle Coachella. I need a glass of wine over an episode of Dawson’s Creek.” Look no further than Napa Valley’s BottleRock festival where you can see the best bands from the ‘90s and early 2000s like OutKast, Weezer and Spin Doctors all the while sipping on the finest wines Napa Valley has to offer. What to wear? A sophisticated twist on Coachella fashion; think maxi dresses, tasteful crop tops, ray bans and Sperry Topsiders. Extra points if you sport a choker necklace. TheFind’s Music Festival Guides have great tips to offer as well that will help you be prepared for any music festival. From fashion to camping gear, they’ve got you covered. Credit Sesame, has just launched the industry’s first no cost credit and identity theft protection service. They’ve added new Identity Protection features aimed to take immediate and effective action to stop theft, minimize damages and restore identities. Unbelievably, 16.6 million people are victims of identity theft each year. Credit Sesame provides live access to certified identity theft restoration specialists to guide consumers through the steps of identity restoration. Users are also automatically covered with $50,000 identity theft insurance to provide additional peace of mind. For those concerned about the security of their personal information since the news of the Heartbleed bug or Target security breach, now is the perfect time to protect yourself. Signing up for the free identity protection service takes as little as 90 seconds and the service is accessible via desktop and mobile devices. Credit Sesame is the only provider that gives consumers the tools they need to access, monitor and analyze their credit, improve their financial standing and protect their identity — all in one place. Learn more at CreditSesame.com, or check out Credit Sesame's mobile app — the #1 Credit and Identity Theft Protection App in the Apple App Store. It’s also available for download on Google Play for Android. This photo slideshow titled “On Vacation” was created with Smith Micro’s ScatterShow software. ScatterShow allows users to easily make their own fun and creative vacation slideshows like this one and share via Facebook, YouTube or any HTML-5 enabled website.
To learn more about ScatterShow, visit http://scattershow.smithmicro.com/index.html Check out more ScatterShow slideshows like this at http://my.smithmicro.com/cgi-bin/gallery.pl In this day and age, people are all about the need for speed. We aren’t talking about cars, we’re talking about communication. Picking up the phone and calling someone to deliver a quick message is becoming obsolete. More and more, people are using SMS to send quick messages, have complete conversations and share pictures and videos. We text every single day, yet do any of us know how the text message came to be? Our guess is most likely not. It all started in the early 1990’s when the first text message was sent from a computer to a mobile phone. From there, Nokia created the first handset phone with text messaging services. At this point in time, texts were usually used to inform mobile phone users of voice mail messages. In 1995, the average American user sent 0.4 text messages per month. That number seems almost made up compared to the now 2,000+ sent every month and 2.2 trillion sent per year by mobile phone users. As the years went on, phone makers began adapting to SMS technology and texting between networks became an option. As text messaging became more popular, new methods emerged for typing on those small phone buttons. When all we had to type on was 9 keys, Cliff Kushler came up with T9, short for “text on 9 keys,” which made texting easier and faster. From there, we were introduced to the QWERTY keyboard, similar to a computer keyboard and now we have touch screen phones with “keyboards” and the ability to swipe our words together. As a result of text messaging, various other communication apps have come to be, yet 81% of mobile phone subscribers still use text messaging as a main form of communication. Now, with this short history lesson, we here at FortyThree ask you to imagine your life without text messaging and from that, realize just how far technology has come over the years. |
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