Best Gadget of 2010: AR Drone

AR Drone is a helicopter on steroids. It has 4 rotor blades 2 cameras and can be flown using wifi from your ipad, iphone and ipod touch. It has a free app on the appstore allowing you to control it. It has two cameras one forward facing and one pointing down which are projected onto your device screen enabling you to navigate at all times, measure speed and allow hovering. Some augmented reality games take advantage of these cameras creating a mix between real images and simulation for single and mulit-player, for example looking for enemy planes on the screen that could be shot down by pressing the missile button. Flying is easy and extremely accurate, the drone is controlled by simply tilting your controlling device and using the toggles on the screen. Some might say "why would one pick a helicopter for the top gadget of 2010?", well this gadget not only represents the advancement and increased popularity of wifi and apple technology, but it also shows that the year of 2010 is a inovational yet fun-loving year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3KrFV0-WFw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aDE5GcriHc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEvfD4C6ow

I'm Friends with Pikachu, Mulan and Buzz Lightyear?

Recently I have found myself on Facebook finding myself friends with many cartoons characters. My excitement was shot down shortly after when finding out it was a new campaign asking users to change their profile picture to a photo of a favorite childhood cartoon to raise awareness of child abuse. This idea has gone viral with friends from all over the world changing to cartoon images.  The facebook page claiming to be promoting the cartoon profile picture has said "Until Monday (Dec. 6), there should be no human faces on Facebook but an invasion of memories. This is for eliminating violence against children."Personally I do not think this will help the cause of child abuse very much apart from raising slight awareness, but feel it's a fun way for facebook users to bring back some nostalgia. I was very surprised by this movement as usually I do not see many ideas going viral on facebook, and wasn't sure the idea that it was for child abuse would catch on, but it seems that a mix of having fun and fitting in has fueled this viral explosion
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Campaign-To-End-Violence-Against-Children-Childhood-Cartoon-Faces/165381953497707

Jumo

A co-founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes, has created a new social network. It is called Jumo and is aimed at people who want to make a difference online by finding, following and supporting causes important to them. To set-up an account with Jumo you must submit a Facebook account, after that you can pick causes you are interested in and you are given suggested projects and issues to “follow”. Once your profile of projects and issues are compiled you can flip through articles relating to them on your profile and “like” them. Although this site needs popularity and more variety in issues and projects once on the road this could be a great phenomenon. I think this type of social networking is putting the growing social scene on the Internet to great use. I believe it will help young and old people get more involved in the world around them and strive to make a difference.

http://www.jumo.com/

Wikileaks

The whistle blowing website wikileaks has been receiving a lot of attention recently. WikiLeaks is a website that publishes leaks which are usually political. Recently it has been in the news fro publishing over 250,000 cables sent confidentially to and fro from US embassies. They claim their motive is to arm people with the weapon of knowledge and to be honest despite global criticism I agree with them. It is quite impressive that WikiLeaks have managed to obtain such confidential data but believe that people have a right to know. Certain publications, such as the footage released the past April, of civilians and journalists being shot by US personnel are horrifying and chilling to know that the US knew about it and tried to conceal it. 

Assasins Creed Brotherhood: Ad Campaign

The latest title from Ubisoft’s best selling Assasin’s creed saga has created a great stir in the gaming world but how much have the ads influenced that. I have seen this pricy ad-campaign on billboards, television and YouTube, it seems to be everywhere. I have been waiting ages for the new AC game and will buy it regardless of whether I see the ads, but my focus is whether people who see the ads will buy it because of them. From what I gathered from friends who have seen the ads, is that mostly people were reminded and subsequently hyped up about it, but most people who did not plan on buying it before they saw the ads were unstirred. 

Frechest Beat

Just wanted to put this song out there, I found it on 1994tk1994, and it only has 50 views on YouTube, but its insane. Love it. 'Ave a look.

Apple's October Event + Me Trying to be Funny

Today was the "Back to Mac" event where some new releases were introduced:


1) Apple has unveiled a netbook -- an 11-inch MacBook Air on the market for $999 and now comes with a built in disc drive! Just kidding MacBook Airs are still not worth it.
2) FaceTime is now available on Macs, for free videocalling between Mac and iPhone (only works with WiFi) shhh if I write it in small people can still be dissapointed after buying their iPhone 4 and realising there is no point of videochatting on the phone when you can just whip out your laptop.
3) iLife ‘11 was released, including new versions of iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand, whatever floats your boat.
4) OS X is getting a Mac App Store that works on the desktop just like on the iPhone, are you thinking what I'm thinking...doodle jump on your mac?
5) OS X’s next major revision is OS X 10.7 Lion, and incorporates iPad-like interface elements. Notice the pattern between the softwares (Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and now Lion), this is a big step for creativty of names in Apple who are used to just using the prefix i-. Although I'm not going to lie iLion a pretty cool name.

Wow, a laptop this thin and can still hold a disc drive, incredible!...Oops nevermind.