Cars and Technology

So on one of my fav tech websites, engadget, recently, there were two different articles about how a certain piece of technology had affected a driver's performance on the road. The first was a woman who reportedly followed the advice or directions on her GPS rather than watching or heeding the road signs. The result: she plunged her mercedes and herself into a very swollen river. So GPSs are awesome devices that are extremely helpful when searching for a location, but maybe they should be used alongside the 'old fashioned' roadsigns

The other article was rather amusing. It made me laugh anyways. Apparently a study done by Drexel University showed that using iPods while driving affected the performance of drivers. REALLY??? you mean playing around with a touch wheel and watching movies while im driving will make my driving, shall we say, slightly hazardous?? shocker. i never knew. Apparently common sense is in short supply these days.

Thankfully all the studies were done by simulation. So no one was actually hurt by this stupidity. And the woman in the car came out fine, if a bit shaken.

We dont need Internet??

So i was under the impression that most people living in the U.S. and most other western countries for that matter, find the internet irreplaceable and absolutely necessary in their daily lives. Imagine my surprise when i found an article on CNN discussing a survey in California on how many people find the internet unnecessary in their lives. According to this article, or more specifically Park Associates a Dallas-based technology market research firm, "29 percent of U.S. households, or 31 million homes, do not have Internet access and do not intend to subscribe to an Internet service over the next 12 months." CRAZY. And i mean i can totally understand internet being expensive and people not wanting or unable to pay for it but then the article hits me with "Forty-four percent of these households say they are not interested in anything on the Internet, versus just 22 percent who say they cannot afford a computer or the cost of Internet service, the survey showed." Although i was very surprised, it is also a little bit of a relief that American society is not quite as internet-obsessed as i first thought. Good to know.

here is the site of the article if you want to have a look. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/03/26/internet.holdouts.reut/index.html?eref=rss_tech

Mac v. PC

So our current project in ITGS is a comparison of the two computer tycoons, Apple and Microsoft, or mac v. pc. We're writing a paper and doing LOTS of research. My personal opinion is that Macs are better for most things and i would much prefer a Mac. But this is a research project so, thoughts, opinions comments??

Because i can

im posting again. Basically to keep myself updated on whats going on in ITGS right now. So. a couple of classes ago we started looking a Google earth. Now, i had heard of this program before and i had seen other people use it, but i had never actually tried it out for myself. so a couple of classes ago thats what i did. And really its so cool! i mean, that i can type in the name of my highschool and it shows me a picture(relatively recent)of it. AND you can tag/pin a particular place and then it will take you back there! Sorry i just found this a little exciting.

Along with Google earth we've also been looking/ learning about News feeds. Which i also found very interesting, because, lets just say, im not exactly the most 'techy' person. so a lot of this was new to me. I mean i had heard of it, but didnt really know what it meant...or honestly why i cared:). but when we started actually using them in class, they really are cool, and so easy. I mean, i love tech in the news like i said. But its kinda aggravating trying to remember all the sites that we can look at, and then trying to decide what to look at first...anyways. The news feeds solve all those problems for me because now i can just click on the orange feed button and ta-da! there's all my fun tech news websites. AND it lets me know in a much more convenient way whether the sites have been updated since i last looked at them. Im just sayin, its pretty cool. I enjoy it.

Finally, i'll give a little update on what ive found thats fun in tech news lately. One of my fav sites to check is Engadget. So on Engadget today they introduced a new video conferencing robot. So when the boss is out of the office, he can still be there through this five foot eight inch robot. Slightly disturbing but still pretty cool. So that was the tech news that caught my attention today. more later i guess cause class is over.

Hi,

Im anna, an 11th grade ITGS student. Pretty much this blog is a project, to let us get hands-on experience during our blogging unit. The idea is that i can use this site to post on cool stuff i learn in and out of class about technology. One of my fav parts of ITGS is tech in the news, which we do at the beginning of every class, just to keep us updated on whats going on in the tech world. So, that will probably be a big part of my posting, just cool stuff i find in the news about tech. thats pretty much me and why im creating this blog. Enjoy!