PEDES3ANTECH

Photo Credits: Digitalreins It is probably the biggest and most important revelation since wiki-leaks and it has already been forgotten. The story of how the US government has been spying on everyone- including its own citizens has been reduced to a Tom Clancy like saga of one person. What started of as a serious discussion on the limits of government power has been reduced to a ridiculous attack on one man's credibility. What slowly developed as an unveiling of how much information private companies have on individuals has turned into an orchestrated effort from the media (both liberal and conservative) to divert our attention.  What happened to this story? and what does it tell us about how serious we are about our digital privacy? The snowden effect As soon as Edward Snowden decided to come out from hiding, the story and the debate he started was doomed. Don't get me wrong, I still consider him as a modern day hero. Although the government and most of the pa...

Amazon.ca Widgets T he issue on privacy has recently come into the spotlight with the revelation that the NSA has been listening to calls and collecting internet data. This revelation has also implicated all the major tech companies (ie. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) as providing the NSA "direct" access to their servers for data collection. Although the companies implicated have been unanimous in their denial that they provide "direct" access to their servers. One by one they have issued statements denying the allegations and have even released information to the public about all government related data-requests sent to them.  So, it turns out, these companies do not provide "direct" access to their servers, but will comply with government requests for information- in "certain" situations. If you ask me, it is all a play of words and a convoluted interpretation of the word "direct". But this is not what this post is ab...

The days leading up to todays announcement about Facebook’s graph search feature was filled with rumours about the company building a “Facebook phone”. All that excitement was shattered when the announcement came that facebook was not launching a phone but a “search” feature. Now while some people were disappointed that no phone came out, I myself was actually very excited about the new feature. Ever since last year, I have reached a point where I felt that Facebook was slowly becoming irrelevant. I started to spend less time on the website and I started posting less and less “stuff” on it. Most of the updates on my timeline since the last year have been about posts I have been tagged in. I felt like Facebook was slowly becoming less engaging and felt like it was just a big graffiti wall filled with my friends rants about the smallest of things. My news feed became a steady stream of irrelevant “daily quotes”, game invites (I do not want to play Diamond Dash) and narcissistic pho...

The Consumer Electronics Show goes into full swing today and companies will scramble to get the most attention from the media and the tech blog community. Although CES 2013 does not have big names such as Microsoft, Research in Motion, Apple and Samsung Mobile announcing anything big, it is still considered to be the one of the most important tech events this year. One of the areas in tech I am most interested in is Wearable technology and I believe CES will be featuring a few advancements in this field. To those of you who do not know what wearable technology is- it is any wearable clothing/accessories that incorporates computing and electronics technology that has a direct and practical benefit to the person wearing it. I also add that wearable technology seeks to enhance human activity and how we interact with our physical environment. Recently this field in technology as seen a steady rise in popularity as we have seen more miniaturization in tech without any sacrifice in c...

The news of Hackulous shutting down was met with mixed reactions- some felt that it was the right thing to do while others felt it was a let down for the jailbreak community. If you are not familiar with Hackulous, it was a very popular Cydia source for Jailbroken iOS devices- its main benefit was access to Installous which served as a source for hacked iOS apps. This source allowed you to download paid iOS apps for free! It was the nature of the service offered by Hackulous that caused the mixed reaction from the public. People who strongly opposed piracy were happy that Hackulous decided to close down. Their main argument is that the economy for mobile apps is stil in its infancy and piracy will only kill the small developers. They saw Hackulous as hurting the small developers and only making it harder for them to compete against big names such as Rovio, Imangi, EA etc. The other side of the fence felt they have been betrayed by the Jailbreak community. Some people said t...

Since everyone is in the mood for making a list of things they plan to do in 2013, I feel like jumping in the bandwagon. So here is my own list of things I plan/wish to do/try in 2013 (catch the hesitation there? ;-p) that is tech related. 1.  Try an Android Smartphone : Yes. I have not owned an Android smartphone and I am slowly getting close to being convinced to try one (thank the Galaxy S III and the Nexus 4 for this). I have tried Symbian, WebOS (this was painful), Windows, Blackberry and currently iOS and so far the best experience I have had is with iOS. I have used iOS the longest too and have basically gotten hooked to their eco-system. I just love how my Macbook Pro, iPad Mini and iPhone synch and work together perfectly (well almost- still room for improvement). Recently though I have heard, read and seen so many good things about Android ecosystem that I have decided that 2013 will be the year I try it out. I will probably jump on the opportunity once I see the S4 c...

2012 has been a great year for technology and signs point to the reality that 2013 will be ground breaking. Here is my list of things I hope and want to see in 2013: 1.  With   Blackberry 10, RIM  re-establishes itself as a key player in the Smartphone market:  RIM is set to launch a brand new OS this January and the company is desperate for this to work. The new smartphones have been leaked over and over in the past few weeks and so far they look awesome. Last year blackberry was plagued with Corporate shakedowns and intermittent outages. It hopes to re-invent itself in the smartphone market with the launch of its new OS and line of smartphones early this year. I also want RIM to make it back as a serious competitor in the consumer market not only in the enterprise market. One main reason I want this to happen is to make sure the market is not only dominated by Android and iOS. Yes Windows 8 just launched but their devices are still crap and they still cann...

An Ominous Question – what is free? If I were to ask this question 10 years ago (even 5 years ago), it would be passed off as a rhetorical question that has no real meaning, however today, it is a question we should all seriously consider. In the advent of all these free web services (social networking/ photosharing/ blogging/ etc) and the rapid growth of companies like  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram  one has to start wondering- how do these companies grow so big in Market Valuation when they are offering a free service? What products are they selling and to who? I am certainly not buying anything from them as 100% of the services I get from them is free. So what is their business model? The product is you (or your personal information shared through these webservices) and their customers are the big Advertising companies (they match the advertising content w/ your personal information). What do you mean I am the product?   I mean everythi...

As the number of people in the world gain access to smartphones and tablets, more and more people are also moving to digital media as their primary source of content and information. In the recent years, we have seen the rise in popularity of ebooks/ereader which has caused a tremendous amount of strain on the traditional publishing business. Recently we have seen major news organizations move to providing digital content accessible through smartphones or tablets. This trend is not showing any signs of slowing down in the near future and big media organizations know this- that is why we are seeing a trend towards monetization. Currently most big names ( Wall Street Journal ,  New York Times ,  The Economist,  etc) run on a very straight forward model- you download their free app, get access to a limited number of articles and if you want full access you pay for subscription. This is their business model and this is how they make their money. In fact some analysts say ...