Phone Friendly Starwood Hotel

The Starwood Hotel chain is very dedicated to making a guests stay pleasurable, through the use cold technology. Within the next three months, Starwood plans to begin using an app to unlock guest doors in two of its hotels. Anyone with an iPhone or Android will be able to automatically receive their room key, and will be able to unlock their room using Bluetooth technology. Starwood Hotel believes this will be the new standard for hotels, because no one will lose their keys, and it saves time checking in when you first arrive. If the app works well, Starwood will include this luxury in its 1,150 other hotels with the next year.

Some other uses of technology among the Starwood Hotel chain are using solar power and an iPad-specific app. Starwood has begun giving discounts during a "Cyber Monday" sale as well. Also, now used on its websites is Instagram integration, which lets visitors see images that guests have posted in Instagram.

Educational Technology and Copyright Law

Image by Timothy Vollmer

I recently read the article Educational Technology and Copyright Law. Honestly, I learned quite a few things from the article, and it clarified a lot. Something I didn't know prior to reading was that almost everything is copyrighted automatically. I was always under the impression that you have to file paperwork and pay to have something copyrighted, but this is only true for licensed works. Copyrighted works are available for free use as long as it is for educational purposes or credit is given to the author. I previously believed that you either had to give credit and/or pay for use of the material. This article told me a lot of things that I didn't know. It will definitely help me with future assignments, and I'm happy to have a better understanding on the issue of copyrights now. The article was extremely helpful, and very informative.

Faster Movies for Comcast Custermors

On February 23, 2014, Comcast confirmed that it will allow Netflix to connect directly to its broadband network. It has been stated that the more direct service is "already delivering an even better user experience to consumers." Netflix and internet service providers have been disputing the huge amount of bandwidth Netflix streaming uses. Sometimes Netflix traffic can be 1/3 of all U.S. broadband network traffic. Because of this, internet service providers have wanted Netflix to pay them for the bandwidth. Early this year, the problem slowed Netflix streaming speeds for customers of Verizon FiOS by 14%. Speeds for Comcast customers have also been really slow, until the new agreement took place.

Click here to view the original article.

3D Printing

Make Create Innovate Convention

• 3D printing was created in 1983 by Chuck Hull.
• Hull was working for a small business that made tough coatings for tables using ultraviolet lamps. When he suggested a new way to use the UV technology, to quickly turn computer designs into working prototypes, he was given a little lab to run experiments.
• 3D printing is used to create models for medical purposes, engineering, architecture, art, and many other types of businesses. The machines have even been sold commercially for the average person.
• The machine still uses stereolithography, like classic printers. A photopolymer liquid is kept in the machine as ink. When a UV light touches the liquid it turns into a solid plastic.
• Since the first machine, companies have been competing to increase accuracy, speed, and quality of 3D printers.

The whole premise of this technology has been to foster creativity, and change in product design and manufacturing, and so forth. This is a means to convert something on the computer to reality in a straightforward way.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/13/tech/innovation/the-night-i-invented-3d-printing-chuck-hall/index.html

US History II

http://wood-ridge.schoolwires.net//Domain/208

I am currently taking US History II this year, which is taught by Ms. Garvin. She is an excellent teacher. You can really tell that Ms. Garvin is passionate about what she teaches. While she is an understanding and sometimes lenient teacher, Ms. Garvin is tough, as well. She constantly has work, activities, projects, tests, and quizzes. Although some of the work is meant challenging, she does accept it late with a deduction of five points for each day. Overall, Ms. Garvin is an organized, enthusiastic, and helpful teacher that knows how to make class enjoyable.

I somewhat knew what to expect out of the class this year, since I had US History I with Ms. Garvin. I expected to learn American history from the end of World War II, where we left off last year, to the present day. In class, so far, we have covered basically only things from the time period of the Vietnam War. This includes, tons of movements and events, thought, like the Civil Rights movement, multiple presidential elections, and the Hippie movement. Ms. Garvin is able to keep all this boring information interesting by always having different types of activities for us to do. With group work, a field trip, trivia games, and handouts, Ms. Garvin always keeps the class positively interactive.

http://my.hrw.com/ (online text book)

One part of the class, that makes US History II interesting is Ms. Garvin's application of technology. For every chapter that we cover, Ms. Garvin has a PowerPoint presentation of important notes. I find this really useful, because I will have all the information I need to study at easy access on her website, and I'm able to concentrate, during class, more on the content of the information than on taking notes. Once in a while, we will even watch videos, during class, which of course makes the class more enjoyable. Lastly, we are occasionally assigned online projects, like creating presentations on https://prezi.com/login/?next=http%3A%2F%2Fprezi.com%2Fyour%2F. Ms. Garvin creatively incorporates the use of technology to make US History II a lot more interesting.

Mission Bit

•Mission Bit teaches the 70% of students in San Francisco who have no technology classes, basic computer science courses.

•Students can take either introductory classes using HTML, CSS, and Javascript, or an intermediate class that teaches Ruby, SQL, and JavaScript.

•Classes are taught by volunteer experienced engineers. There are so many volunteers that the student to instructor ratio is 2:1.

• Between the 2013 and 2014 school year, overall student enrollment tripled. Out of the 89% of students who had never worked with programming 40% were female. (In contrast, only 21% of Computer Science AP test takers in California were women last year.)

• Last semester, students created video games, made websites, created chat clients, and visualized audio.

• Mission Bit offers students high school credits, experience companies look for in computer programmers, and internships with San Francisco technology companies.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/05/missionbit/

Welcome!!!

Hello, my name is Cora and this is my blog. You're going to see a lot of tech articles for my Web 2.0 class on here. I, also, take English II, Spanish III, US History II, Chemistry, and Algebra II. At my school I'm involved in many clubs, like band, choir, art, robotics, and soccer. I love playing on the soccer team, as well. I really like listening to music, but I find country music extremely boring. I play video games a lot; my favorite video game is Black Ops II. I've been a vegetarian for five years now. I live with my six family members and my dog named Braxton. I hope you enjoy being on my blog, and find its information useful. Thanks for reading. :)