Who will clean after Bush?

Barak Obama vs. Bill Clinton
(sorry I meant Hillary)

First off, I’m an Obama guy. I don’t have anything against Bill, the guy is good with ladies, he reported a surplus of $559 billion at the end of his presidency, and left office with a 65% approval rating. I keep going back to Bill for some reason, but will she too?

Anyways, just Yesterday (Wednesday the 20th), Obama continued on with his winning streak since SuperTuesday two weeks ago to win Wisconsin and Hawaii with a 58% and 76% respectively, if you haven’t been keeping count, this is his 9th and 10th in a row baby. The guy is on fire. He is taking states with groups that should be going to Clinton like the Whites, the lower class, and the less educated. So what is left for Clinton? I only hope something is. Clinton appears to have disregarded smaller states like Ohio to focus her appetite on the more candidate-rich states like upcoming Pennsylvania and Texas.

This is only a good strategy if you are guaranteed the big states. But is she? I would’ve asked her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, but the smart lady resigned. If you are dead hungry and the nearest burger joint is 100 miles away, would you stop at the 25 mile mark to get some fries? I would, cause they do add up and if at 100 miles you find the joint closed, Hillary, now you are stuck without a burger(Texas) nor the fries(Hawaii).

Vermont, Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island are up in 13 days. So let’s wait and see, but as Bill Clinton puts it: Texas loss may mean the end.
I know what you are thinking: What about the old guy? Never mind him, we’ll talk about McCain later. And Huckabee, well he’s too cute to sit in the oval office.

GO OBAMA, "Yes We Can."

FACEBOOK 3D??? Brilliant add on- Highly Recommended !!

Okay, so enough with the Facebook stuff, right? Wrong. Its all I see on everyone’s screen when I go to class or get my coffee from Starbucks in the morning. Okay I lied about the coffee thing but the application is getting more attention than a woman running for US president. So for the very very few of you that have facebook and the even fewer that click on the Photos tab the first thing in the morning, here is an add-on that you can thank me about later. Its called Piclens and it makes stalking your friends and family on FB, or searching for images on Google and Flickr, a lil bit more "3Dish its 2008" style.

After all, we only have 100,000+ images served per second on Facebook during peak traffic and 2.2 billion friends tagged in user photos. I’m not making this up, its straight from my man Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s a Firefox add-on so you have to have Firefox to use it. You know Firefox right? (Internet Explorer’s enemy).

And for those of you who cleverly betrayed Bill Gates, PicLens is available in a MAC download too.

You don’t have to thank me for this, I changed my mind, just enjoy. I know I’m hot. Watchathink?

Click Here to Download

Fly your Way Through Airport Security (Wait....what?!)

Are you tired of removing your clothing and shoes at airports to the awkward pleasure of Homeland Security officers? (I think so!) For those of you who get extremely frustrated with the endless layers of airport security, FlyClear is your solution. For only about $100 a year (plus a one-off TSA vetting fee of $28), the Clear card can be yours! It is a card with an innovative biometric chip that can easily allow you to breeze right past airport security. So how does it work?

All card holders are pre-screened and subsequently granted access to a specific number of airport "fast pass" lanes around the United States.

As of now, FlyClear works at the following airports/terminals: Albany, Denver, Indianapolis, JFK Terminals 1, 4, 7, Newark Terminal B, Orlando, San Francisco and San Jose.

The pre-screening is a painless yet thorough process: There's a kiosk at which this has to be done. The technology is quite frankly, pretty damn good. Here's a brief synopsis of what has to be done:

1. Scan your passport and drivers license
2. Very detailed fingerprint scans
3. Two retinal scans for (one for each eye)

The word about FlyClear is spreading fast so get your card before the price is hiked. Based on what I've heard about it, most banks on Wall Street are starting to issue FlyClear cards to employees to boost efficiency and timeliness. It is definitely something that is worth checking out!

Why don't you BUY ONE NOW? If you're one of those skeptical types, click HERE to research some more and find a FlyClear store near you.

8aweek: Save yourself from the Internet!

This brand-new Firefox add-on is the perfect cure for our addiction to pointless websites on the Internet. Studies from 8aweek.com have proven that the average employee wastes about 8 hours a week on irrelevant websites. Can you imagine how much it would be for the average college student?! A LOT more...and that's probably a huge understatement!

8aweek is seed funded by Y Combinator, a VC firm that supports promising startup-companies. This unique software tracks (no adware or spyware by the way) your individual browsing patterns and logs the amount of time you spend on specific websites. If you want, you can add those websites that you spend too much time on, to a restricted time setting. In other words, if you are spending WAY too much time on YouTube everyday, 8aweek will allow you to set a 30 min or 45 min timer for YouTube so you can measure your time much more efficiently. It's definitely something worth checking out if you're in dire need of proper time management! Download it here

Indelible Footprints on Facebook

Have you ever wondered that it is virtually impossible to delete all traces of yourself on the popular social networking site Facebook? The only option available to the 62 million active users of the site, is to deactivate their accounts. Facebook has been permanently storing all of the users' information and pictures all along since it started up in February of 2004 without directly saying so.

There is a great deal of concern among users about potential privacy risks as a result of having their personal information saved on the Facebook database. Even if you manually were to erase all of your tracks, messages, photos, on your profile, the majority of that content has been stored up already by Facebook. Food for thought.

There are about 15 million pictures uploaded on Facebook every single day! Also, many of you with Facebook accounts may have noticed a rising number of ads on your profiles about your friends activities and applications. You are not even asked for your consent before this information is publicized. We may not realize it, but if we a long, hard look at it, there is definitely a risk of privacy abuse involved here. Just because someone is not your friend on Facebook, doesn't mean they don't have access to your information. Scary.

The Success of Open-Source Technology - Facebook (Oh yeah, MySpace too)

Well, it's pretty obvious that social networking has evolved into a very important part of our everyday lives. (Especially if you're above 17 years of age and below the age of, well, you really can't tell these days) Anyway, your typical college student, after forcing his or herself out of bed, almost immediately powers up his/her laptop to check new email messages or logs into Facebook to read new wall posts, messages, and upload pictures from the night before (that they usually don't remember taking!) In fact, Facebook is actually picking up where email left off in the first era. Basically, to cut a long story short, college students are becoming much too "addicted", for the lack of a better term, to maintaining and more importantly, displaying a well-balanced social life to their peers through their virtual Facebook profiles.

Anyway, in recent months, as a result of creating an innovative platform for up-and-coming developers and allowing them to release their own applications and Internet services, Facebook has multiplied its membership by a huge margin. Oh yeah, lets not forget MySpace, the most accessed website in the United States (even ahead of Google!) Yes, that's a staggering fact, but the truth is that despite of having a membership base of 200 million and expected revenues of $800 Million USD this fiscal year, the popularity and credibility of MySpace is being increasingly challenged as a result of Facebook's major strategy shifts in the past year.

What I really think is that there is massive potential and opportunity in the field of technology. It is the future of this country. We should all utilize the entrepreneurial attitude that we have stored up somewhere in ourselves to create and contribute something to this industry. Let’s take Facebook for instance. Rather than just signing up to become a member of Facebook, why not actually create a an application that you would like to see on there by researching the necessary requirements.

Also, many of you may have noticed a large number of media publications headlining stories focusing on the rivalry of these two giants. Fortune's feature story titled "MySpace Strikes Back" immediately comes to mind. I felt the story undoubtedly lacked a great deal of substance since MySpace really hasn't done anything yet to combat the recent threats posed by Facebook. Regardless of that, comparisions between these two popular websites can go on for days, and I don't want to delve any further into that topic.

Or in the “real-world”, why not, conceive of a totally fresh and creative idea and implement it into an actual business venture. Of course, this is easier said than done but it’s the effort that counts. Countless “young turks” around the world are running their own businesses/companies before they are even old enough to legally drink! It is time for Americans to step up in a big way and prove to the world that we aren't what we have been classified as: "fat, dumb, and lazy". The successes of many social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn.com, as well as other startups such as YouTube and Digg.com, without a doubt, confirm the fact that open-source is a very big thing in the field of information technology. I’m sure it still has a long, long way to go.

Let’s shift the focus back to Facebook. Consumer Internet companies better accept the fact that it is not just an exaggerated fluke. What many consider to be a short-lived frenzy, will soon be launching an IPO. It makes us wonder if this thing has the potential to be the next Google: a stock that has skyrocketed from its $85 IPO to an unreal $700 in just a matter of three years? Of course it does.

The World's Fastest Computer Chip is Coming....

Gone are the days of single core processors. As chipmakers came out with the revolutionary idea of having dual cores on a single chip, computers started to run much faster and consumed much less power. The Babson Lenovo T60 ThinkPads that have been issued to the incoming freshmen can be equipped with single and dual core processers. Well, guess what? Chipmakers are coming out with a single chip that will be able to have 80 cores. Go figure.

This chip is capable of giving mind-blowing speed and no complains for battery life. Quite frankly, the list can go on and on. Well, the wait won’t be too long. Actually, according to the Chief Technology Officer at Intel, Justin Rattner, it will be released in about five years. When it will be introduced to commercial markets, it will change the way computers function, literally.

Intel has been successful in producing such a chip, the size of a fingernail. This chip is capable of producing 1 trillion calculations every second. This could very well be, the fastest chip ever made. It just makes one wonder the possibilities that this chip will provide consumers and businesses. Technology has no limit. It will continue to grow and shock everyone.

In financial markets on Wall Street, tasks that take days to be completed, will take minutes, if not seconds to complete. The possibilities are simply endless. According to BusinessWeek, 10 years ago, a group of supercomputers taking up about “2,000 square feet and [consuming] a half-megawatt of electricity” could do the same job that this fingernail-sized chip will be able to. Information will be transferred at lightning speed and the technology will take a giant leap.

Rivals such as AMD and IBM have been attempting to accomplish such an innovation using multiple chips. After purchasing graphics chipmaker ATI, AMD says a new platform they are working on will also aid to revolutionize the computer industry.

One major drawback is the fact that software is not able to take advantage of multiple-core chips as of yet since they have not yet been made to do so. Software makers are in a dire predicament while trying to write threaded programs that have the capability to take advantage of just two cores. The announcement from Intel will of course give it a major advantage and simply goes to show that processors have the capability to grow and advance beyond belief.

Our world is becoming more and more digital by the second. Software is starting to replace hardware in many new inventions.

Try to imagine the world without technology. Guess what? You can’t.

The Ups and Downs of Wall Street

Well, the economy of the United States is slowly, but surely beginning to improve when compared to the past few years, during which financial markets were gravely suffering. Despite of experiencing a slowdown in housing and the decline of mortgage applications, Chairman of The Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke strongly feels that the outlook for inflation, in the near future, is simply put, “benign”.

Nonetheless, that still means that inflation remains a risk, and if the need be, the Fed is ready to take necessary measures. (If you know what I mean). To the Senate Banking Committee, Bernanke, emphatically claimed that the outlook for the coming year, in terms of the economic prosperity of the United States, is very optimistic. Despite the lag from the diminishing housing market, the U.S. economy will advance at a moderate pace.

The primary uncertainty that the Fed is dealing with is undoubtedly commodities such as oil and their arcane, and usually unpredictable prices. The rates presently sit at 5.25 percent, however, as Bernanke puts it, the Federal Reserve "is prepared to take action to address inflation risks if developments warrant."

Financial analysts feel that Bernanke’s outlook for the future means that the prices for US stocks and bonds will rise, the value of the dollar will rise, and the Fed will begin to reduce rates sometime this year. He also expects the Gross Domestic Product to grow. Even though the housing market showed minor signs of getting “back on track”, the economy would not immediately begin to skyrocket. There exists a strong disinterest in residential investment and its weight will continue to press down upon economic growth in the coming months, if not quarters.

Moreover, as far as the job market is concerned, Bernanke feels that the pace of hiring will slow down quicker than people normally expect in today’s market. As “baby boomers” begin to retire and job growth slows down, economic activity could be affected in more than one way. US exports among American trade partners are growing in a robust way. As of now, the Fed has no true timetable that explicitly states when and if they will make any changes to rates or anything of that sort. We will just have to wait and see how, when, and if the constantly changing financial markets pave a clear path indicating the future of America’s economy (The keyword: if).