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Due to recent events, this blog will no longer be updated.  Thanks for reading.

World Water Day?

I was completely unaware of anything related to this event.  Apparently, since 1993; March 22 was declared World Water Day by the United Nations General Assembly.  This day is designed to encourage people to refrain from using their taps for the entire day in efforts to raise awareness of the plight around the world; water shortage.  Check out these facts regarding water around the world.

• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water related illness.
• Women spend 200 million hours a day collecting water.
• More than 3x more people lack water than live in the United States.
• The majority of illness is caused by fecal matter.
• More people have cell phones that a toilet.
• Lack of community involvement causes 50% of other projects to fail.

Visit HERE for more in depth statistics for what I talked about above.

I learned about this movement from a very informative YouTube channel that I subscribe to called SourceFed.  They cover 5 randomly interesting stories a day in a segment they call 20 minutes or less.  I find them to very entertaining and the knowledge I gain doesn't hurt as well.  Check them out, here's the video related to this topic.

By choosing to help spread the word about this cause you attribute to potentially saving lives, even if you can't donate you may enlighten someone who can.  Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave comments below. 

Avoid Crime via GPS

I had recently seen a video on YouTube that mentioned this sort of technology, and I thought it was interesting so I looked a bit more around the internet to see what I could find.  Apparently, certain GPS' and downloadable content is available to alert you when you approach high crime areas and re-route you accordingly.

More particularly, there's CrimeFind for GPS in Chicago.  CrimeFind for GPS uses your proximity alert function of your GPS to alert you while you are driving, when you approach areas of the city with a higher than average crime history.  It uses crime incident data for violent crimes. Violent crimes are: Homicide, Aggravated Assault, Robbery, Aggravated Robbery.  Incident data over the past 12 months is used.

This is a proximity alert file that you install on your GPS.  The file already contains the alert radius, therefore, you install it without setting your own alert distance.  This is done because the alert radius varies with each census tract depending on the census tract size.  The alert radius is used to coincide with the census tract size.  As you drive, when you approach a census tract with average violent crime over the past 12 months greater than 3 times the city average, your GPS will alert you so you are informed.  The crime rate (i.e, "4X") is displayed along with the census tract number.  Each census tract is an individual POI within the file, so you can also plan ahead and search "along your route" for the CrimeFind POI to know whether your proposed route will take you into, near or through a high crime area.  Any high crime census tracts will show "along your route" just as a gas station or hotel can be displayed "along your route."

 Is this feature a good idea?  Tell me some of your opinions on this topic in the comments below.  As always, thanks for reading!

KONY 2012

News of Joseph Kony is spreading around the internet and other media like wildfire; Who is this guy?  Why don't more people know about him?  Kony is the leader of a guerrilla group by the name of Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA.  The LRA sets its goals on abducting children to recruit soldiers and sex slaves for it's officers.  They murder, maim, and rape entire villages.  It is estimated that the abductions are in the 66,000's and they have forced the displacement of over 2,000,000 people.

With out stealing too much thunder from this movement, or going too deep into detail;  I beg you all to please take 30 minutes to watch the video they have made and make a decision for yourself.  Will you help spread the message?

Video and Link to their site below, please watch and share.

Kony 2012 - Learn More

V2V Technology!

I love sharing this kind of stuff with my viewers because technology is really amazing and has great potential to benefit our lives.  Recently, I saw a video on YouTube the briefly talked about V2V Technology or Vehicle to Vehicle.  It is estimated that V2V could possibly prevent up to 80% of vehicle collisions.

So, what exactly can this do for me?  Well, there's a long list of features in the works and some of which are already being used in newer model cars such as; Acura TL, Cadillac DTS, Hyundai Sonata, Infiniti M37, Ford Taurus SHO, Mercedes-Benz C300, Toyota Venza, and Volkswagen GTI.

• Emergency electronic brake lights:  Alerts you if a car in front of you has applied it's breaks suddenly.  Helps when the vehicle is one or two cars ahead of you and you can't see it.

• Forward-collision warning:  Capable of applying your cars breaks when a collision is detected; same works for the rear when back up in reverse.

• Blind spot/Lane-Change Warning:  Monitors vehicles in your blind spot and illuminates a small light to show you of the possible danger.  If attempt to use your turn signal and sound will beep to alert you it is unsafe. 

Just a quick look at some features already in use.  Essentially, V2V cars and devices could act as independent transmitters and receivers which could communicate with each other in a certain radius.  A car several miles a head of you could send information to your car alerting you of traffic, weather, or accidents.  Maybe there's something in the road or you got into an accident.. V2V can alert someone near by, not to mention activate emergency medical care.

With the good, can come the bad.  Could users be at risk in terms of criminal activity allowing people access to your car?  Would police be able to tell when you're speeding or disobeying traffic signs?  I think the technology in itself is a great idea, but issues like these should not play a factor in the technologies use.

What do you guys think about this?  Do you like it or do you hate it?  Leave your responses below and thanks for reading!

NASA's Biocapsule

So, apparently NASA has a new invention called the Biocapsule and I thought this thing was absolutely amazing because it stands to change medicine in such a profound way.  The original idea behind this capsule was to be an implantable device that would diagnose astronauts who were on long spaceflights and automatically dispense medication in relation to what ails you.  The implant itself is barely the size of a standard pencil tip and would be injected somewhere in your body, say your leg or arm.  It is made of carbon nano tubes which can't be broken down in your body, but are porous enough to release a dose of medication.

Immediate ideas behind the capsule's use are to detect and treat radiation that astronauts might be introduced to while on a mission in space.  Other uses are viable as well and I think the applications are limitless.  Insulin for diabetics without constant injections or finger pricks.  Chemotherapy for cancer patients injected directly into a tumor.  People with allergies no longer need to carry an EpiPen.  Even people with chronic allergies all the way down to heartburn or the common cold.

The Biocapsule is truly amazing in my eyes and I really hope this makes it out to the public in the years to come.  What do you guys think?  Let me know below.

Thanks for reading!

Facebook goes public!

Facebook has become quite a colossal giant in it's 8 years and will probably only continue to grow.  This social network service was co-created by Mark Zuckerberg which was founded in his Harvard dorm.  The service is home to over 800 million active users as of January 2012 and has high hopes of further growth by expanding into other countries.  Facebook is easily the most used social networking site in the world and it shouldn't come as a surprise when they have a like button on almost every web page on the internet.

On February 1, 2012 Facebook filed their documents to become a publicly traded company by way of a $5 billion initial public offering.  An IPO of that size makes it one of the biggest in tech history and definitely the biggest in internet history.  Experts believe their value will yield between $75 and $100 billion.  So, be on the look out for Facebook to be pricing their shares in the next three to six months!  Maybe if you're lucky, you'll be able to grab some up.. or not.  Either way, good luck.

While reading a few articles relating to this story, I stumbled upon a couple other interesting facts about the company.

• 845 million Active users as of Dec 31, 2011.
    ° 425 million use mobile devices.
    ° 483 million login daily.
• 250 million photos are uploaded every 24 hours.
• Over 100 billion friendships have been created online.
• $3.71 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profits.

Just a few random facts I found that were very interesting to me.  Thanks for reading!  And feel free to leave your comments or opinions below.  Below I'll link a map of social network site usage around the world and if anyone is interested in a movie about Facebook - check out The Social Network.