Taylor Gordon, Author at Blerds

January 21, 2015January 21, 2015

New Generation of 13-Inch Laptops Are Pushing Battery Life to New Limits

In today’s fast-paced society, it’s hard to find a professional of any kind who doesn’t have a laptop he or she totes around on a daily basis.

Even on their off days, many professionals are always expected to be plugged in and somehow connected to their work, hence the importance of a laptop with battery life that can hang in for the long haul.

It’s also why the tech-savvy, the white-collar workers, the emerging entrepreneurs and the dedicated students are praising the arrival of the “two-day laptop battery.”

Battery life has always been a major selling point for today’s electronics, and, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Geoffrey A. Fowler, consumers can finally get their hands on laptops that will allow them to complete two full days of work without ever reaching for a charger.

Fowler tested four of the latest 13-inch laptops that boast impressive battery life when compared to their competition.

He put the Acer Aspire S7-393, the Apple MacBook Air 13, the Dell XPS 13 with a power companion and the Lenovo Thinkpad X250 with the additional 68+ battery through three separate tests.

One test focused on running video throughout the day. Another focused on more simple digital content and the daily web surfing of the average consumer. The last test was a more rounded approach where he took each of the laptops with him and used them throughout his daily life.

Two quickly emerged as leaders in the tech world when it comes to digital stamina.

After putting the laptops through a variety of different tests, Fowler found that the Dell XPS 13 with its additional power companion and the Lenovo Thinkpad X250 with an extra-large removable battery outperformed the competition by a long shot.

Both laptops soared past the 15-hour battery mark and the Lenovo Thinkpad X250 even found its way into the 20-plus hour territory.

If you take away the external battery help that both laptops offer in exchange for some extra cash, Fowler says the Dell XPS 13 is actually the laptop to look out for this year.

Without the external battery, the Dell laptop’s battery life reached an impressive 12 hours, and it accomplished this with a cheaper price tag and less weight than its competitors.

In other words, the small, lightweight laptop hosts an incredibly impressive battery for its size. Since laptops are meant for those who are constantly on the go, exchanging a few hours of battery life for overall convenience could be in a consumers’ best interest.

Some consumers may be asking just how are laptop batteries packing more juice without making laptops any heavier or larger.

Fowler explains that it’s all made possible thanks to better processors.

“The latest models from Acer, Dell and Lenovo contain a new kind of processor from Intel, 5th Generation Core, that adds about 90 minutes of battery life, compared with last year’s laptops,” he reported. “And older models, like the current MacBook Air, contain last-generation Intel chips that still provided a massive 50 percent battery boost over anything from early 2013 or before.”

These processors have become more efficient at shutting down nonessential functions when users don’t need them.

“Why be ready to crunch the numbers to render 3-D imagery when all you’re doing is scanning top-10 lists of cats,” Fowler asks in his review of the laptops.

Processors aren’t the only difference that’s boosting battery life either.

It also comes down to the size and brightness of the screens, whether or not the display is high-resolution and, of course, watt hours — the basic units used for measuring battery capacity.

So without the external batteries, which will cost tech shoppers roughly another $100, the laptops didn’t quite last an entire two days of work.

With these new lightweight external battery plug-ins, however, it can be possible for traveling laptop users to get the most out of their devices for roughly two days, even if they left their chargers at home.

January 21, 2015January 21, 2015

Combating Racism With Coding: Van Jones Discusses Teaching 100,000 Low-Income Kids How to Code

All across the nation, the Black community has marched and rallied, chanted and sung, pushed and fought for justice after the slayings of unarmed Black men by white authorities.

As the community continues discussing solutions to ending the types of racial profiling that too often steals the lives of innocent young Black men, civil rights activist Van Jones hopes to unlock coding as the secret weapon in the war against racism.

The inspiration came shortly after the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen who was gunned down by volunteer neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman was acquitted of murder.

Jones was discussing race in America with a music icon and his close friend, Prince.

“Every time you see a Black kid wearing a hoodie, you say: there’s a thug,” Jones recalled telling Prince during an interview with USA Today. “If you see a white kid wearing a hoodie, you say: there’s Mark Zuckerberg. I said, ‘That’s because of racism.’ ”

That’s when Prince delivered an answer that would light a fire under Jones.

“Maybe so,” Jones said Prince replied. “Or maybe you civil rights guys haven’t created enough Mark Zuckerbergs.”

From that moment forward, the challenge was on.

Jones launched Yes We Code as a new initiative under his Rebuild the Dream organization.

The initiative hopes to teach 100,000 low-income youths how to write code.

Prince was so excited about the initiative that he promoted it himself back in July as he headlined the Essence Festival in New Orleans.

Yes We Code also held its first hackathon in the city.

Prince’s rebuttal to Jones’ question made the civil rights leader realize that giving Black kids the tools they need to thrive in today’s economy is key to helping them overcome prejudice and change the way they are perceived by the population at large.

The Black community did, indeed, need more Mark Zuckerbergs.

“How do we create a situation that when you see a young Black kid in a hoodie, you think, maybe I should go up and ask the kid for a loan or a job as opposed to assuming the kid’s a threat,” Jones continued. “… Yes We Code aspires to become the United Negro College Fund equivalent for coding education. Yes We Code exists to find and fund the next Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in communities you would never expect to find them.”

The initiative comes at a perfect time.

The tech industry is desperately seeking young, Black talent.

Some of today’s biggest tech giants were met with backlash when diversity reports revealed that companies like Google and Facebook had very few Black employees.

In addition to being met with backlash by the public, it also served as a reminder for the companies that there was an entire market of ideas they hadn’t fully tapped into because they were missing key voices from communities of color.

Black consumers are some of the heaviest technology users and yet they were hardly present in that industry.

Sadly, many children of color have no idea that they would be able to flourish in the tech space.

“Aptitude tests show one out of five kids of any color have an inherent aptitude for the kind of problem-solving that is required to be a computer programmer,” Jones said. “So that means one out of five kids out here in low-income communities, Native American reservations, Appalachia, housing projects, barrios, ghettos could be on the Mark Zuckerberg track. The problem is their mother doesn’t know, their father doesn’t know, the coach doesn’t know, the teacher doesn’t know, the preacher doesn’t know. So they all want to be LeBron James.”

The NBA welcomes a very small number of new players every year, which means many of these young kids with NBA dreams will be met with disappointment.

In the tech field, however, opportunities are vast.

“Meanwhile, the technology sector says they are going to be a million workers short in eight years,” Jones said. “And if we are not careful, we will have 15 Black Urkels trying out for a million jobs.”

For that reason, Jones believes the Black community has to focus on guiding the youths and helping them reach such opportunities.

That is the real forefront of the battle against racism — putting Black people, especially youths, in a position to succeed and flourish.

“The forward march of technology is unstoppable,” he said. “The forward march of communities wanting to be a part of the process of writing the future is unstoppable. The miracle that’s happening is that these two inevitable forces are coming together constructively. In the last century, this would have been protests, lawsuits and a lot of vitriol.”

In the midst of racial tensions across America, the war against racism has to be just as prevalent in the offices of Silicon Valley as it is in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.

January 20, 2015January 20, 2015

Elon Musk Hopes to Revolutionize Public Transportation With Hyperloop Transit System

Elon Musk made a commitment that could move the country one step closer to futuristic transportation after he pledged to build a test track for his Hyperloop high-speed transportation system.

From self-driving cars to handy jetpacks, tech-loving consumers have finally been seeing futuristic modes of transportation come to life.

While these futuristic devices are still being tested and aren’t available for the public to openly purchase as they wish just yet, they are still serving as glimmers of hope that soon we will be traveling in futuristic ways that we once only dreamed about.

The latest major step toward this goal is Musk’s announcement that a Hyperloop test track is on the way.

The tech-savvy serial entrepreneur took to Twitter to announce that he “will be building a Hyperloop test track for companies and student teams to test out their pods. Most likely in Texas.”

He also announced that he has hopes of launching an “annual student Hyperloop pod race competition, like Formula SAE.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO described the Hyperloop system as a “cross between a Concord, a rail gun and an air hockey table” back in 2013 and explained that it could revolutionize the way we travel.

If successfully built, the Hyperloop system could allow people to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in only 30 minutes, traveling at speeds close to 800 mph.

That same journey currently takes about five hours for commuters.

The design plans for the Hyperloop are complex and took up more than 50 pages when Musk shared the design online.

In short, however, the Hyperloop will be a long elevated tube with a near vacuum.

This would significantly cut down on all friction and allow pods to travel through the system at incredible speeds.

Musk’s plans also reveal that he will try to mount a large fan on the front of the pod in order to re-direct high pressure to the back of the traveling capsules.

If it sounds like an expensive project to you, that’s because it absolutely is.

The project has an estimated price tag of at least $6 billion with many estimating that it will likely land around the $7.5 billion mark.

It’s also important to note that this is for the test track alone.

Musk said he doesn’t plan on taking on the responsibility of building a complete Hyperloop system.

Instead, he hopes that a third-party will step in if he is able to prove that building the track is indeed feasible and safe.

While Musk is clearly a man who loves his technology, he also is known for recognizing the dangers of quickly advancing devices.

Many science, engineering and tech experts warn that advancements with things like artificial intelligence can come with a large variety of downfalls.

The most severe of those possible downfalls is the idea of a hostile invasion.

It may sound crazy to some, but Musk has already donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute so it could further its research on how to keep artificial intelligence safe.

January 19, 2015January 19, 2015

We Could Be Close to Building Our Own Phones Thanks to Google’s New Customizable Project Ara

After years of tech companies guessing what consumers wanted in the next generation of cellphones, Google is currently testing a completely customizable modular phone that will put more power in the hands of the consumer.

Today’s intense battle of the cellphones is all about which phones boast the features that mean the most to the most consumers, but what if each person was able to select their own unique set of features that they truly wanted in their personalized cellphones?

It’s a concept that has been pitched in the past with ideas like Phonebloks, but Google is bringing the modular “build your own” phone concept to life.

The tech giant is launching a pilot test of the customizable smartphone in Puerto Rico and has deemed the new venture the Project Ara smartphone.

What this does is allow consumers to create a phone personalized to their own intentions for the device.

A lover of photography can swap out space for a larger camera lens.

A music lover can incorporate larger speakers.

The health-obsessed can add pollution sensors and heart rate monitors.

Those who are still overwhelmed by new technology but have finally grown tired of flipping their phones open can create a much simpler, cleaner device that will bring them into the new age without bringing them out of their comfort zone.

That’s the theory of the modular phones, but only time will tell how plausible it will be on a larger scale.

For now, consumers in Puerto Rico can buy up to 30 modules and start customizing their new phones.

It’s a project that could allow other mobile devices to edge ahead of the iPhone in consumers’ eyes.

For now, the only version of the modular phone will run on the Android system.

There is no word yet on how soon the phones could finally hit the market if the trial run goes well.

January 15, 2015January 15, 2015

New Study Finds That Computers May Know Us Better Than Our Friends and Family

A new study published earlier this month revealed that even a person’s closest friends and family didn’t know their personality as well as computers did.

A team of researchers from both Stanford and the University of Cambridge discovered that a computer with access to a person’s Facebook “likes” actually knew more about that individual’s personality than that person’s own friends and family.

The study focused on five key areas of a personality that are also known as the “Big Five,” the Stanford Daily reports.

Those areas are “openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.”

It wasn’t long ago that consumers were shocked to find out that algorithms online were doing more than keeping track of their favorite shopping sites or other daily activities. Today’s algorithms are also judging consumers in a sense and using assumptions made about their personalities to not only control advertisements but to completely rearrange their search engine results.

Now that computers are also proving to be accurate judges of personality, it seems like our technological companions are getting to know us all too well.

During the study, the researchers collected self-assessments from the participants about their own personalities.

Each of the 82,220 volunteers had to answer 100 key questions about their personalities before their friends, family and spouses were then given a 10-item questionnaire about their loved one’s personality.

Meanwhile, the computer used nothing more than the participants’ Facebook “likes.”

On average, the computer only had to sift through 10 likes before it could guess the person’s personality more accurately than a friend or roommate.

After about 70 likes the computer was able to guess the person’s personality better than their close friends.

It took roughly 150 likes for the computer to perform better than family members.

It took much more research for the computers to perform as well as the research participants’ spouses, however.

On average, the computer had to analyze about 300 likes before it could judge the participants’ personality as well as their spouse did with the 10-item questionnaire.

Since most people only had about 277 likes on Facebook, the computer often failed to judge the participants’ personality as well as their spouse.

While spouses still seem to understand their loved ones’ personality better than the Facebook like-reading computers, the researchers said there were still some key implications to take away from the study.

In the study’s abstract, the team of researchers wrote that “computers outpacing humans in personality judgment present significant opportunities and challenges in the areas of psychological assessment, marketing and privacy.”

Only time will tell how much privacy consumers are willing to sacrifice in exchange for advancements in psychology and marketing.

January 15, 2015January 15, 2015

Starting With the Youth: iUrban Teen Tackles Tech’s Diversity Problem at Its Core

As the tech industry continues to battle a serious diversity problem, one program has emerged as a leader in getting Black youths interested in, exposed to and engaged in STEM careers.

iUrban Teen has garnered attention on a national scale and has been a front-runner when it comes to not only exposing young people of color to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers, but also getting them actively engaged in the field at a young age.

“What truly motivated me to create iUrban Teen was the fact that a lot of folks in diverse communities don’t know about the opportunities that are available in STEM careers,” said Deena Pierott, iUrban Teen founder and chief innovator. “This is powerful information to share and I wanted to create a vehicle where we not only told them, we also showed them.”

Many of today’s tech giants are dishing out millions of dollars to create diversity boards, hire new advisers and find other ways to boost diversity within their company walls, but iUrban Teen is attacking Silicon Valley’s diversity issue at its very core.

While unusually high barriers to entry have been plaguing Black people who are interested in STEM careers, there are also far fewer applicants interested in breaking through those walls.

Several studies and successful tech entrepreneurs have pointed to the fact that many Black children are not exposed to the wonders of technology due to insufficient funding in school or a lack of access to mentors.

Thanks to iUrban Teen, that problem may not persist much longer.

“We’re solving the digital divide,” Pierott, who is also the CEO of Mosaic Blueprint, continued. “We’re solving the problem of exclusion by sharing information with parents and teens about avenues of opportunities and how to get there.”

The program focuses on educating young Black males between the ages of 13 and 18 about STEM careers and giving them the skills they need to have a solid foundation to build on if they want to pursue such a career path.

The program is also unique for its integration of the arts with STEM, proving to the Black youth that the opportunities in the STEM field are far more diverse than just coding and number crunching.

It also equips the teens with “new perspectives” of the STEM field that could make them truly valuable to the biggest tech giants of the future.

From Teen Tech Summits to STEM+Art Tours, the program hosts a variety of ways to get students of color to dive head first into the tech space and take the first step toward creating a successful future.

That, Pierott says, is more rewarding than any of the major coveted awards that iUrban Teen has earned in the past.

“I could say [my greatest achievement] was the White House honor or the Rockefeller Foundation nomination, or any of the other honors,” she said, but instead there were simpler moments that truly meant the world to Pierott. “My greatest achievement was to receive an email from a mother who said, ‘Thank you for what you do, it was always so difficult trying to get my sons to talk about school, careers, etc., however, every time we attend an iUrban Teen event we talk for hours about the possibilities.’ That’s my greatest achievement — that we make a difference.”

While many Black youth can learn a lot from the programs, there is also a lot they can learn from Pierott herself.

In today’s job market and economy, only the daring, the bold and the strong have the ability to take a leap of faith to become the head of their own companies.

It’s an accomplishment that not many get to boast, but Pierott certainly has more than enough bragging rights.

Even as she stands as a successful businesswoman today, however, she reminds people that the road there wasn’t free of obstacles.

The key was to embrace those obstacles and “fail forward.”

“I’m pretty flexible and I know how to fail forward,” she said. “Meaning, I’m not afraid of failing on a project. I just try a different approach.”

The hard work paid off and Pierott achieved great things while her mother was still alive to witness it.

Pierott’s mother died just one day after she received her first major award in October of 2010.

“I was extremely close to my mother and was also her caregiver,” she said. “She was diagnosed with dementia in 2007 and that’s when I decided to leave my job and start my own business at home so that I could take care of her. It was important for me to allow her to see me be successful with my business while she still knew who I was. So I worked and worked and worked on my business model. Receiving the MED Week Minority Business of the Year for Mosaic Blueprint was a highpoint for me and for my mother who was there to see it.”

January 13, 2015January 13, 2015

The Last Frontier: Education Technology Finally Sees Surge in Investments as the Industry Plays ‘Catch-Up’

Investors are showing clear signs of interest in education technology after investments in the field jumped 55 percent in just one year.

Venture and equity financing for educational tech companies soared to roughly $1.87 billion last year, a report from CB Insights revealed.

From the medical industry to the financing industry, technology is constantly being heavily integrated in both major and emerging businesses today, but education always seemed to stand as the last frontier for technological advancements.

While tech entrepreneurs have introduced many great tools and apps that could revolutionize classrooms across the globe and possibly improve the overall quality of the time spent in the classroom, education technology has not been a very profitable business.

Many argue that it also hasn’t been proven to be as effective as some entrepreneurs would boast.

The opposing side to that argument would say that it’s hard to prove technologies are effective if it seems nearly impossible to get them widely implemented.

Whatever the reason may be, investors are continuing to pour money into the tech education space regardless of concerns about how profitable the industry really is.

“Education is one of the last industries to be touched by Internet technology, and we’re seeing a lot of catch-up,” Betsy Corcoran, chief executive of EdSurge, an industry news service and research firm, told The New York Times.

It’s important to note that there is still a lot of catching up that needs to be done in the education technology space.

Notable education technology companies like Pluralsight and Remind garnered much attention after raising $135 million and $40 million respectively.

Other consumer technology companies, like Uber, blow those numbers out of the water with investments totaling up to $2.7 billion last year.

Reports indicate that the greatest problem for tech education is getting entire schools to implement new technologies and give unconventional methods of grading, teaching and issuing assignments a try.

Instead, many of these entrepreneurs are forced to contact individual teachers, and proving the technology’s effectiveness becomes even more difficult.

Investors also tend to shy away from dishing out larger checks in the industry because many emerging companies do not have a clear business model that explains where revenue will come from.

Since many educational technologies will need to be free for most students or teachers to even consider them, discussing profits can certainly be a tricky conversation for both investors and emerging entrepreneurs.

January 13, 2015January 13, 2015

8 Black Techies Every Blerd Should Follow on Twitter

Mario Armstrong @MarioArmstrong

With over 18,000 followers on Twitter, Mario Armstrong is one of the most popular Black techies on the social media site. In addition to tweeting interesting tech news, he also shares inspirational messages and appears on NBC’s Today Show to discuss some of technology’s latest trends and other digital lifestyle topics. Many people already know Armstrong as an Emmy Award-winning radio and TV talk show host.

Kathryn Finney @KathrynFinney

Kathryn Finney has dedicated much of her time to breaking down barriers for Black women in the tech world. Finney is the founder of DigitalUndivided, a platform that aims to close the digital information gap for women and people of color. Much of her Twitter feed is dedicated to that cause and mirrors those sentiments. With over 12,000 followers and a big personality, Finney has become quite the social media socialite in the tech industry.

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January 12, 2015January 13, 2015

Researchers Across the Globe May Have Moved Us One Step Closer to Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication

A team of researchers that are countries apart may have moved the world one small step closer to direct brain-to-brain communication, although some experts are skeptical about the alleged scientific breakthrough.

One of the main criticisms of the digitally obsessed generation is the inability for people to put down their cellphones and take a break from texting, sharing and otherwise communicating through their mobile devices.

Well, researchers may have unlocked the secret to direct brain communication that would allow people to “text” in a sense just by thinking and allowing that message to enter the intended receiver’s brain.

It’s an incredibly interesting concept that also comes with a reasonable share of concerns.

Giulio Ruffini, one of the researchers on the project and the CEO of Starlab in Barcelona, said the experiments were merely a proof of concept, but the implications of the research could be much greater.

While some reports indicated that the team of researchers managed to send actual words and thoughts from one person’s brain to the other, the researchers say that isn’t the case – although they hope their research has managed to lay the groundwork for such technologies in the future.

What their experiment did accomplish, however, was the ability to record brainwaves and send these brainwaves to another study participant in another country.

One subject in Kerala, India, was “fitted with a brain-computer interface that records brainwaves through the scalp,” the BBC reported.

The subject was then asked to imagine moving their hands or feet.

Depending on which body part the subject imagined moving, a zero or one would be recorded and the message would be transmitted using flashes of light.

The receiver, miles away in Strasbourg, France, was connected to a TMS robot and would then see flashes of light whenever the first participant imagined moving his hands.

Eventually, the researchers attempted to send more meaningful messages by associating certain strings of zeros and ones with actual words.

This was just as successful and an accomplishment that researchers said was extremely exciting.

Not everybody was as enthused by the study, however.

One scientist told IEEE Spectrum that the work seemed more like a “stunt” presenting no new observations or information.

This is a direct contradiction to Ruffini’s claim that the experiment was a “bit of a historical moment.”

It certainly isn’t the first successful experiment of its kind.

Last year, a team at Harvard managed to send messages from a man’s brain to a rat and another team at the University of Washington created a complex brain-to-brain interface where the sender was actually able to control some of the receiver’s motor cortex.

It is important to note, however, that Ruffini’s experiment was the first one to involve participants in two different countries.

Either way, Ruffini is just hopeful that such experiments can one day allow people to send “verbal communications” directly to another person’s brain.

Of course, with so many major hacks taking down huge companies and targeting millions of people, there are concerns that technology isn’t nearly secure enough to allow such an advancement to happen without major risks.

Being able to hack into someone’s bank account is dangerous enough, but the ability to hack into someone’s brain could be detrimental.

Researchers do remind consumers, however, that the ability to send direct brain-to-brain messages is still many decades away.

January 9, 2015January 9, 2015

‘Hypothesis Paper’ Suggests NASA’s Curiosity Has Captured Evidence of Life on Mars

A scientist’s analysis of photos taken from NASA’s Curiosity suggests that there is evidence of ancient life on Mars, but many critics are warning people not to get too excited just yet.

The new paper in the journal Astrobiology claims that Curiosity’s photos of the Gillespie Lake outcrop in Mars’ Yellowknife Bay reveal microbially-induced sedimentary structures (MISS).

If this is true, the structures would serve as proof that microbial life exists, or at least existed, on Mars.

While some science-lovers are gazing at the photos with wide eyes filled with amazement, skeptics aren’t too sure about the evidence.

After all, the paper was even intended to be nothing more than a “hypothesis paper.”

The photos are currently being treated as if they are extraterrestrial versions of ghost pictures—those who already believe in that kind of thing are excited about the visuals but those who have long been skeptics remain unimpressed.

The circumstantial evidence comes from Nora Noffke, who has spent quite some time looking for signs of life on Mars.

That alone, for some people, is enough to suggest that Noffke could be reading too deeply into the vague markings on Mars’ surface.

Not everybody is discounting the paper, however, and Geek contributor Graham Templeton believes, at the very least, the photos are something to get excited about it.

“All wishful thinking aside, and within the context of this paper’s openly hypothetical status, it’s not irresponsible to get at least a little bit excited about these findings,” Templeton wrote.

In the same breath, however, Templeton explained why many experts aren’t placing any bets on the research just yet.

Outside of the markings in Curiosity’s photos, there is no other evidence to support microbial life on Mars.

“Curiosity has been blasting rock samples with lasers and measuring atmospheric methane to search for direct chemical evidence of current or ancient life, but so far the findings have been ambiguous at best,” Templeton added. “If microbes really did carpet Gillespie Lake for a long period, that might have been one of a small selection of places where that was the case.”

So the pictures are no sure sign of life on Mars but it’s important to note that Curiosity’s mission isn’t over just yet.

The rover is still making its way across the rocky planet hoping to one day send back solid evidence of life on Mars.