Items tagged with communication
Communication can be hard, particularly if you and the person you're trying to speak to don't speak the same language. Google's language tools have been making it a little easier for years, but now some of that translation magic is sliding over to Gmail. The company has just added over 100 virtual keyboards, transliteration and IMEs—collectively called input tools—in Gmail. These tools enable you to type in the language and keyboard layout you’re accustomed to, making it easy to keep in touch with family, friends and coworkers from any computer. You can even switch between languages with one click. To try it out, check the box next to Enable input tools under Language in Settings....
Read more...
Alcatel-Lucent is one of those companies that you know has a huge impact on technology, but you can never really put your finger on it. They're a company that mostly revolves behind the scenes, but they play a hugely important role in how we communicate over mobile networks. This week, they're getting a lot more attention than usual in the mainstream technology press, and it's all due to something called the LightRadio. If you're familiar with conventional cellphone towers, you'd know that they're huge, heavy and ugly. Carriers generally have a tough time getting them installed in cities, and a lot of that has to do with just how hulking they are. But the company's LightRadio could change the...
Read more...
Text messaging has been a popular form of communication for teens for quite some time now, but adults are catching the craze as well. A new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reveals that 72 percent of adult cell phone users now send and receive text messages. This represents an increase from 65 percent in September 2009, and 58 percent in December 2007. The Cell Phones and American Adults report also shows that 87 percent of teens use their phones for text messaging. Although adults may be catching the texting bug, teens still send and receive the most messages: teens average 50 messages a day compared to the 10 messages most adults send and...
Read more...
Infrared communication has been an integral part of device-to-device talking for years upon years now, but it's growing kind of old with technologies like Bluetooth and RF taking over. But for those still needing IR support, Logitech has a solution.For those in the know, you'll know quite well that IR requires a good line of sight to send and receive commands, and if anything blocks the way (like an A/V cabinet door, for instance), your whole signal goes unheard. Tragic, really. The answer? The Harmony IR Extender System, a brilliant (albeit simple) adapter that enables IR signals to be sent (and received) where never before possible.The device has been fine tuned to ignore "noise" and focus...
Read more...
Not long ago we gave you a look at a product manufactured by OCZ that made use of brainwaves as a futuristic but in-the-here-and-now game controller. Dubbed the NIA, for Neural Impulse Actuator, instead of buttons and joysticks, this device gave user the ability to control in-game movement with their mind. At the time, it sounded almost a little crazy but it worked, at least in novel sort of way, perhaps for some freaky party fun. In reality, for us, the product was more of an under-pinning that if mankind can dream it up, for the most part anything can be built. Today's science fiction is tomorrow's reality, as they say.Image courtesy, Southampton University And so say...
Read more...
Google plans to begin testing a new product called Google Wave tomorrow. This new Web application combines elements of email, chat, Wiki documents, blogs, and photo-sharing sites in order to create a hosted conversation or "wave" of Internet communication. Google first demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The product will initially be available to approximately 100,000 beta testers. This closed group will help the company find any bugs in the application before it is released to the public later this year. The application was created by brothers Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the same pair who developed Google Maps. The Rasmussen brothers hope...
Read more...
We've seen report after report asserting that children, teens and even adults text like there's no tomorrow. According to Nielsen Mobile research, the average teenager with a cellphone sends and receives a grand total of 2272 text messages per month, or about eleventy billion per second of every day. All joking aside, there's no denying that the SMS revolution revolution is upon us. Certain schools are even educating children about the SMS lingo, but one has to wonder if all this textual communication isn't harmful to the innocent minds of our next generation. A recent piece over at The Wall Street Journal attempts to tackle that very question, and unlike the pundits out there who are suggesting...
Read more...
Besides the obvious breaches in personal information we all hear about - lost laptops, stolen hard drives, lost CDs - there is the less obvious. An example would be accidental or intentional sending of sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, via email. Or even, as has happened fairly recently, sending denigrating comments via email, which then eventually come back to haunt the sender. For example, one communications-control vendor, Orchestria Corp., says its software could have prevented the CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc. from posting the rival-denigrating comments on Internet message boards that he later came to regret. How so? Because Orchestria’s software...
Read more...
CNN news has a good write-up of just how empty internet communication can be. While the internet is a great way to keep in contact with distant friends or relatives, and even have a quick chat with people close to you, there is still the lack of depth that face to face interaction presents. Those of you with a fading interest in MySpace will probably relate to the article. "The superficial emptiness clouded the excitement I had once felt," Henderson wrote in a column in the student newspaper at Iowa State University, where he studies history. "It seems we have lost, to some degree, that special depth that true friendship entails." Across...
Read more...
