Infected with a Virus?

Don't you just hate it? Let's say, you just turn one your computer, you wait long enough to load up all apps and before you know it there's something wrong in your life. Computer seems so slow, can't access your beloved files, your computer gently asks you to restart itself… and your cursing shows in no better timing. You don't say it, you can't read it but you know exactly what's wrong… in a word? A virus.

Not that is happening to me right now, but for whatever reason I just remembered how it feels when you have something tremendously important to do/read/write in the computer, something that can take just 2 min of your life on a good day, but it may take all morning when your computer is infected. We have fought these guys before, and luckily I feel today is sort of less frequent to encounter them in out daily life.

Since we know how to stop them (more or less) now the thing is, for some people to find different applications of computer virus in other grounds. And, needed to say, these viruses not only show up in computers, but as you may be aware, it's also visible in phones, chips, videogames consoles and practically all sort of software electronics, now that can be huge!

But a new application for computer viruses may be a bit 'out there', someplace you may overlooked and never thought it was possible… what if I tell you your body can house a computer virus? I know you would hardly believe me, so if you fancy know what's going on you're in for a treat. The place? University of Reading in the UK… the man responsible? Dr. Mark Gasson… the crime? He contaminated a chip with malware and he inserted it in his hand.

The results? Well, we didn't get sick, let's say he just shared the sickness all around. He was able to pass the virus along different devices just by standing close to them, computers, devices and the likes. What's so ingenious about it? Well, if you ask me I'd say the fact that your computer can be infected wirelessly (not using wifi) is sort of frightening, and not only computers… have a smart phone? Just by standing next to the wrong guy you'll be needing a new one. And I don't want to be mean, but what about people with pacemakers or earring implants? Now this is dangerous ground.

Not all is bad, since instead of seeding viruses we can also seed good stuff as well to improve the very same devices we could potentially harm. They actually came up with a name for all this new trend, if you wanna sound fancy the name is digital implants. Sounds cool, just hope it's actually a good thing.

What can we say of such things? Imagine how this things can be sort of normal a 50 years down the road? If you could improve one of your senses which one would it be? Have fun thinking about it, if you like leave a comment and hopefully we'll read each other later one this week! Take care!

Google Street View

What's new guys? Right now I'm just chilling a bit after spending over 8 hours in a bus, kinda tiring, the movies were alright, but there's always a certain point where you get all tired up of looking at the screen and for whatever reason, you spend way more time looking at the road outside… trees, rocks, clouds, whatever you can find and you immerse in your own thoughts, to the extreme where you may not remember a thing you saw, since all looked so familiar. Maybe an iPod might be our best friend in such experiences.

Anyway, I had a meeting in this building, which I never saw before, and in certain city I never visited, but believe it or not I knew exactly where to go, what to do, where to eat and finally visited one or two tourist spots around… but how did I do it? I knew exactly how the building looks like, needed no further directions to get a meal or to snap a couple of good shots. A new best friend helped me out… Google Street View.

Probably you've heard about this free service provided by Google, if not, let me break it down for you: Street View is a service seamlessly embedded to Google Maps, and what this service does is to provide you with fully detailed pictures of the surrounding as if you were driving on the street. Whatever public place you can see from you car in real life, you can see it from your computer… pretty cool huh?

Just go to google maps, grab that yellow fella from the zoom scale in the upper left and drag him to the exact spot you want. I showed this to my dad and he, for the lack of a better word, sort of freaked out. He understood right there the full potential (both good and bad) of the Street View. No need to say all the kindness this service brings to our lives… need to go to a friend's house you hardly remember the address to? No problem, just follow the streets and as soon you recognize certain details, you'll see the porch and the door in no time. What about the other way (sort of my case)? I just had an address, just type it down and you're there… is that easy? Yes, it is.

And, like you've heard before, is like taking a tour without standing from your seat. Wanna visit other countries? No problem, you can ride the streets of Spain, England, France, Canada and many others just dragging and clicking on your mouse. Downsides? Well, from my point of view what this does is simply making public knowledge, well, more public. I mean, if you have directions or an address (which are public) you can view now with no effort the real place (again, which is public). People who mean harm to us might take advantage of this tool, but is just like -for example- a hammer, which it's also a public tool (you can go and get one from the store) and you can either build a house or hurt someone… decision is up to you. Same with Street View.

Regardless is a fantastic tool you can access from you computer and you should definitely give it a try (if you haven't already). What's your favorite place on Earth? You can watch it as if you were right there! Leave all your comments right below and you can also attach the links to the places you like the most there… keep enjoying your week and see you next Monday!

Superpowers… in the Real World

What's up? So… another Monday, is alright, we've discussed it before and now we gotta start our week. All I gotta say regarding last week is… what's going on with the weather? I know you know what I'm talking about, these heat waves are growing bigger, let's hope nature isn't trying to make up for the cold winter we just had.

Now… topic of the day: Superpowers. What's up with those? Well, I don't need to throw at you the whole 4-1-1 of them since you pretty much have the knowledge… flying, x-ray vision, super strength, you know them all, of course, in the science fiction. Maybe you've picked up a comic book or watched a cool movie and you wondered at least once what would be like to have one of these superpowers, but what if I told you that some of these abilities are being performed by real people in the real world? And I'm not talking about using special lenses, an airplane or a suit, I'm talking no devices here.

It turns out science has made possible some dudes and gals to have certain abilities we consider -for the lack of a better word- amazing! Not sure exactly how we can explain some of this, but it's real and they live among us. The first example I can think of is this german baby I heard some time ago with a strength beyond ordinary, he was born in 99 and his nickname is 'Das Uberboy', and what scientists say is that there's a real genetic mutation (sort of X-Men) and his muscles are all ripped.

There are less 'obscure' cases (since that german kid has never been seen), such as Ben Underwood, his superpower is called 'echolocation' (for me the best new name for a superpower). It turns out he can't see, but it looks like we could, since we plays ball, skates, writes and all using and incredible techniques involving the echoes on things bouncing back at him, pretty much as a bat… that's a superpower Batman would be dying to have! An incredible note, Ben also can play videogames… but how? Don't ask.

As a final example are some Buddhist monks, who apparently are some sort of Pyro from the X-Men (second time I quote the comic), since the generate heat energy from their bodies to the point when they can put on fire certain objects. They do so with a meditation technique called Tum-mo, that way they lower their metabolism and control their body temperatures. Researchers still can't say how this works, but it's known the practical implications and even astronauts can benefit from all this.

What do you think? Sure there are many more examples, but how do these occur? Is not like science cannot explain it, more like scientists can't, because all has an explanation. Do you know anyone with any cool abilities? Any sort of explanation you may have about any superpower? If you could have one of them… which one would you like? (Please don't say something like: the superpower to have all superpowers) So many questions! Leave all your comments downtown and if you want to know more about it check out the vid! See you next Thursday!

iAds

Hey! What's up guys? Enjoying life so far? Recently I've been very active checking out readings, programs, music and the likes, so I guess is fair to say my week has been great… sort of waiting for a phone call and a response from one or two applications, so that keeps me intrigued. I can't wait the time to relax a bit, maybe doing nothing on the internet or maybe just watching the TV and have a laugh. And that is exactly what I did yesterday!

You know how it is, after a long day of work, you just get home and the first thing you want to do is to take those shoes off, lay down in that nice couch you have there, grab the remote and simply submerge on that big box called TV, you don't want to know nothing about life for a while, so you  find your favorite program and… what? Oh yes… advertisements. And I don't mean one or two, I'm talking about a marathon of those… +10 ads between shows, don't you just love them?

To be honest with you, I don't. The thing is, I don't mind one or two to pop up between the show I'm watching, but sometimes things get out of hand… a lot. And not just by quantity… oh no… I'm talking quality too. Little by little the ads guys think the audience is getting dumber every day and some ads are practically an insult, all just to buy their products or services. Thankfully not all ads fall into this category, there are some ads that I really like and they sell their product quite well, but these are rare and sadly not enough.

And keep in mind I've just talked about TV ads, but they're the tip of the iceberg. Ads are now everywhere. Let's talk about what could be our average day. Wake up, turn TV/radio (ads), take a shower, breakfast, drive to work (ads on the radio, street, bus stops), get to the office, check the post mail (paper ads), get a magazine (more ads)… and that could be just our morning. But we've adapted to all this bomb, to the point of reaching the fact that, we don't care what we hear/see anymore, nothing connect to us and we get things we've consumed since always. Now another form of propaganda is hitting our way… web ads. They seem to be less intrusive, less interactive, but they're there and sometimes they don't look very pretty, others are great and you expect to see them more often, sadly they're minority.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying ads are all hideous and should be banned for life, but I guess what I'm trying to say is, mostly all ads are not made in a way the audience connects to the product, advertisers just want to sell, sell and sell at any expense. Sorry, I don't bite that anymore. Gladly there are few ads out there that dare the audience, make them think and, as I said earlier, they click with the public and, even if it sounds corny, people fall for their product or service. Hopefully as technology gets more powerful we also get a bit smarter and take advantage of it… just saying!

Well, guess that sounded like a harsh letter, but I bet you fell the same like me in some ways. What's your favorite ad? Is it in TV, radio, internet… maybe a magazine? Do you think hi tech can do something about it to make it better? Leave all your comments below and hope to see y'all next week… in the meantime… have a great one!