The coolest gadget that can change the way we work.
Technological advancement is becoming faster and faster everyday. As technology advances, so is the need and sophistication of those who keep up with its changes. The faster the advancement in technology the higher the need for even more portable and easy to carry gadgetry. People, especially businessman are constantly on transit and this has necessitated at least now than ever before in the history of technology, the need for more sophisticated, portable and easy to use gadgets.
The Universal Serial Bus (USB) Gadgetry is just one among many. The USB devices connect people to more computers and peripherals. It has the power to connect computer users with a whole new world of PC experiences. According to
the USB has many functions and it has revolutionarised the way we now communicate with the rest of the world. Among some of its very crucial functions is that the USB now affords people, especial the businessman on transit the ability to connect back to his/ her office by means of video conferencing from anyway in the world.
The
has been defined as your instant connection to the fun of digital photography or the limitless creative possibilities of digital imaging. The USB is a very cool gadget that allows us to connect with other people through the power of PC-telephony and video conferencing. This device has several uses some of which are the following:
1. The USB card reader:
This is a small and portable (the size of a keychain really, this image works as a proof) USB2.0 card reader that has 2 versions compatible with the following memory cards:
• the old Memory Stick - launched in 1998 by Sony
• the Secure Digital card, best known as SD card – launched in 2000 by Panasonic, SanDisk and Toshiba, it was like direct competition between the two cards
To better suit the portability function, the USB plug is foldable – capable of being folded up and stored as you can see in this image.
It’s also very light and very small as previously mentioned. If you can’t imagine the real size of something with the following dimensions – 33×33x18mm – then check this site out: Sizeasy .With the assistance of SIzeasy the Card Reader is compared with a matchbox, check the image and get your own conclusion:
The USB Cube Card Reader can be a useful device to transfer files of your memory cards to/from your laptop since you can take it virtually anywhere, and
Then there is the magnetic LED scrolling badge.
There are a number of uses for this little magnetic LED scrolling badge. The magnetic back allows you to stick it to your PC case for example, allowing you to talk smack without actually talking. Cordless operation means it will look clean no matter where you put it. Battery life is claimed to be 12 hours with a full charge via your PC USB port. Both English and Japanese characters can be displayed on the badge as well. Up to 512 letters can be programmed into the device with eight different cases available (which I assume to mean something to the Japanese since we only have two cases in English). The price is set at 4580 Yen and it is available now. I think this would make a cool name badge for the office too.
USB Ghost Radar.
Japanese has always found ways to associate stuff in real-life with USB flash drive. The most notable examples are the USB Sushi and USB Dimsim. While the plastic food has no real correlation with functionality of the USB flash drive, it serves to jump-start sales. And now, they have come up with a GhostRadar USB flash memory that detects, well, ghosts.
USB Heating Seat Pad. check:
In olden times, Japanese life centered around tatami; pretty much most of daily activities take place in this tatami-carpeted rooms. Instead of sitting on sofa or armchairs, people sit or kneel down on soft seating pads. Now, you know what this doormat look-alike is all about, and this USB version is supposedly to keep us warm during winter times.
USB Noodle Strainer. check:
Preparing soumen with this "USB cookware" is quite a unique experience. Simply add cold or iced water to the oval-shaped plastic bowl, connect this strainer to a USB port, and the machine will create a water flow. Next, place the pre-cooked noodles into the water channel, and they will be carried along with the circulation of the water.
The "coolest person" I've meet.
As far as I am concerned there is no such thing as “a cool person”. However this does not mean that there aren’t some people I respect and hold at high esteem. For me the coolest person would definitely be a one whose ideals are beyond reproach in several if not in most cases.
To be cool for me means to be sensitive, to be respectful of other people and to be daring and caring about what is right and to live a life that counts. In other words I don’t find a lot of people who can live their lives to affect others in the most positive means possible. I find that a lot of people live a lifestyle that can best be defined as narcissistic and self-centred life-styles. Most people are self serving and selfish and that’s not cool at all.
A cool person, whatever being cool means for you would be a person who is willing to forgo their momentary pleasures for the good of their societies and those around them. I have met people who come close to having such ideals and such people deserve an accolade for their efforts. However, for most of the people I have encountered, living for the here and now seems to be the way to go. I believe that the day I really meet a cool person, then my life will never be there same again. I have meet a lot of people and I still find my life has not changed at least that much.
A cool person has something to offer, and something I will desire to either be a part of or something that would scaffold me into desiring to be a better person than I already am. Good and noble things are desirable and as far as I know there aren’t that much good and noble things and courses around to either emulate, to desire or to strive to be a part of. These are my findings and they can not be disputed you can try to argue with them but I bet you will find them truthful in many ways than not.
I find that at the heart of being cool is the ever demanding question of identity. How many people are truly stable in their identities? How many people love who they are without trying to be someone else, without trying to fit, without trying to impress? The positive articulation of the ideals and imperatives demanded by these questions will be for me the very litmus, indeed the acid-test by which I will measure what it is to be a “cool person”.
I have and I continue to encounter on a daily basis a people who are either struggling with moratoria identities or any other defective psychosocial personality disorders. I do not perceive such a trait as "cool" even though I am sometimes tempted to, for the mere fact that I truly desire to look at one person and say, “God they are cool.”
However, this seems to me more like a dream that one can never wake from. It is painful and at best disheartening. I say this fully aware and totally not oblivious of the fact that some people who will read this article will think I have completely lost it. I will definitely appreciate such people because this will for me be a true achievement: in the sense that at least I would have truly made a statement that gives people something to think about. For I believe one can not make judgement about something they have not thought about or something that have not challenged their comfort zones one way or the other.
In the post modernistic era in which we live, nothing seems to have any concrete meaning. Everything is either here and there or nowhere at all. Meaning has been reduced to a mere relativity for fear of being truly cool: a concept (coolness) I equate with pristine genuinity. Being truly genuine places certain demands and heightens the essence of what it truly means to be “cool”, and thus creates a much despised need for people to be true to themselves.
This means that for a minute we are made to face the real persons we are with all our flaws or those things we truly don’t like about ourselves. Faced with these demands we find it easier to withdraw and coil in the depth and gloom of an autistic cocoon we create for ourselves as a way of escaping reality. Thus I do not think there is or there will ever be anything cool about such a behaviour, and if this is what most people tend to do then it truly suffices to argue as I have already suggested that there is not such a thing as a “cool person” except of course in our dreams, somewhere deep down the recesses of our superficial hearts.
In our imaginary world, in the realm of fantasy “ cool persons” exist and I can not know about him because I am real, I am not phoney, I am wide awake, I see reality as it is.
What is Web 2.0 and does it advance Democratic ideals?
Web 2.0 is, according to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 “a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. According to
Tim O'Reilly and
John Battelle, web2.0 can rightly be defined as:
“a social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation”.
In other words, it is that form that moves away from static websites (i.e. the use of search engines and surfing the net from one website to the next) to “a more dynamic and interactive World Wide Web” (ibid). It is characterized by interactivity, by sharing and open communication or its tendency toward a decentralization of power, with regard the dissemination of information.
Web 2.0 thus has a huge tendency toward leaning toward building interactivity and rudimentary
social-networkingsocial networks which are aimed at producing content and thus exploit
network effects available to its end-user.
In this sense web 2.0 encourages and advances democratic ideals among, firstly the consumers who benefit from the products produced by members and also it helps provide enough information and aids interactivity and discussions between the investor, the consumer and the media as regards what each expects in the relationships that they have with each other.
In this regard, access to consumer-generated content facilitated by Web 2.0 brings the web closer to Tim Berners-Lee's original concept of the web as a democratic, personal, and (Do It Your self) DIY medium of communication. In fact Paul Graham reckons Democracy is one of the greater ideals for which Web 2.0 was established. See for more.
To demonstrate this democratic ideal, Paul Graham href="http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html"> argues that examples of amateurs surpassing professionals in this business is a testimony to Web 2.0’s commitment to advancing democratic and providing equal opportunities for amateurs to channel their efforts in the right direction.
Wikipedia Wikipedia he argues may be the most famous form of such efforts, although ‘experts’ have given it middling reviews. It (Wikipedia) advances democratic ideals in that it is free for all to read. Most web based articles are for sale and even if one was willing to pay for them, they do not in most cases provide the option for one to link to them for future use.
For Paul with whom I concur this shows that such articles are not “part of the conversation”.Web 2.0 as an advancer and proponent of democratic ideals in information production and dissemination, has as one of its portal the involvement of the reader in deciding what counts as news. This is indeed one other place for which the democratic ideal it safe guards seems to win the race against its rivals.
News sites like Reddit Reddit. carry quality news and allow people the opportunity to choose not to be bothered with reading the front pages of newspapers or magazines anymore. Whereas Wikipedia's main appeal is that it is good enough and free, these sites suggest that voters do a significantly better job than human editors. Readers are participants in deciding what qualifies as news; they are actively involved in the process as democratic participants whose say is worth something.
According to Paul Graham the most dramatic example of Web 2.0 democracy is not in the selection of ideas, but their production. He further notes that the news we often read on individual people's sites is as good as or better than those we might read in newspapers and magazines. Thus such a realisation gives the reader independent evidence: besides, the top links on Reddit href="http://reddit.com">Reddit are generally links to individual people's sites rather than to magazine articles or news stories.
On the Web, people are free to write what they want and nearly all of it falls short of what Paul Graham calls “the editor-damped” writing common in print publications. Furthermore, Paul argues that because the pool of online writers is very, very large, then if it's large enough, then the lack of damping means the best writing online should surpass the best in print. He further claims that because the web has evolved mechanisms for selecting good stuff, it means therefore that its selection of stories beats the damping-down of print media, for the same reasons market economies beat centrally planned ones.
However, it must be noted that sceptics may see the term "Web 2.0" as little more than a buzzword; or they may suggest that it means whatever its proponents want it to mean in order to convince their customers, investors and the media that they have begun building something fundamentally new, rather than continuing to develop and use well-established technologies[2].
Whatever the case might be, it should be noted that Web 2.0 has brought a completely new spin to the information dissemination than ever before. And it should also be noted that not having a centrally directed editorial body or governor, predisposes Web 2.0 to a lot of vials. The ‘Free-flow’ of its information may not necessarily be such a good ideal in dispensing information.
The line that separates right and proper dissemination of information and its abuse thereof is quite faint to say the least. Thus it is with much faith in those that are involved in disseminating information through the use of Web 2.0 networking effects that I argue that Web 2.0 should be seen as a system that advances democratic ideals with regards information production and dissemination.
