Flat Screen TV Televisions
The Differences in Flat Screen TV’s
One of the biggest leaps in technology over the last few years has been the transformation of the humble television set in our homes. From the bad old days of black and white to the innovation that colour brought, it’s been a constant upward progression, with cathode ray tubes (CRT) being the norm for so many years.
However, in the middle of the 1990’s, television technology took another huge leap forward with the introduction of flat screen TV’s. Now, instead of pictures looking warped if you were sat at a certain position in the room, due to the way that a CRT screen curved, you would get the same picture quality no matter where you were sitting (although it would obviously look a little scrunched if you were way off to the side!).
As technology has continued to grow, especially with the rise in popularity of home cinema, so the television manufacturers have constantly brought out new sets with even newer features. While this is great news for those who want the biggest and best for their home, it can also be a little confusing trying to decipher what system is best. Therefore, knowing the differences in flat screen TV’s can be a great help:
Plasma screen televisions. One of the most popular types of TV on the market today, plasma screens offers huge displays with excellent picture quality. The screen is made up of tiny little gas plasma bubbles, which create a picture when they’re charged by electricity. These TV’s are popular due to the quality they offer and the fact that larger screens are more affordable than their LCD counterparts.
LCD television. Using the same technology that is on flat panel computer monitors, liquid crystal display (LCD) sets offer the best quality of picture, due to the clarity that the crystal display offers. However, this is offset by the fact that they are more expensive, especially as you go up in size. However, due to their lightweight dimensions, they can easily be hung from a wall or ceiling.
Rear Projection television. One of the forerunners of the explosion in popularity of home cinema, rear projection sets work by generating an image from the back of the TV and displaying it onto the main screen. This type of technology allows for some truly massive sets – however, due to the way the technology works, you will lose picture quality of you sit anywhere but directly in front of the set. Strong sunlight also causes the screen display to fade.
DLP projection television. By using optical semiconductors, similar to how a projector works when presenting slideshows, DLP televisions can offer wonderful picture quality, yet can be a that little bit more expensive, so is probably best suited to the serious home cinema buff, or business use.
Whatever technology you go for, though, you can be sure that you’re getting a far better experience than you would have had even just a few short years ago. And even better is the knowledge that it’s only going to get better.
What is Globalization? Shift Happens
It’s been couple of years since I read the excellent books by Thomas Friedman, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Understanding Globalization” and “The World Is Flat”
Living in Michigan and being in the computer programming business, I’m no stranger to globalization. As I was reading those books, I was constantly thinking about the truth in Thomas Friedman’s view of globalization and how most people in North America can’t see it coming.
According to this PEW study, THE DIGITAL DISCONNECT -THE WIDENING GAP BETWEEN INTERNET SAVVY STUDENTS AND THEIR SCHOOLS, “Many schools and teachers have not yet recognized—much less responded to—the new ways students communicate and access information over the Internet.” Even in the most wealthy school districts, educators still teach kids to look things up in printed encyclopedias because the educators don’t understand Google and the Internet. Many school districts pay much-too-much money to Microsoft and the big computer manufacturers and consulting firms because they don’t know or understand how cheap and reliable Linux based computers and free, open source software have become.
Are your school administrators and teachers helping your children become literate for the next century? Do your educators even know what is happening outside of our little world? Do You know? Please take eight minutes to watch this important video:
Read more about the Flattened World at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_is_Flat
Text of Did You Know? 2.0
Did you know?
In the next 8 seconds . . .
34 babies will be born.
[graphic indicating India – 5, China – 4, U.S. – 1]
What will the world be like . . .
. . . for them?
Name this country . . .
· Richest in the world
· Largest military
· Center of world business and finance
· Strongest education system
· Currency the world standard of value
· Highest standard of living
Great Britain. In 1900.
2006 college graduates
[graphic indicating U.S. – 1.3 million, India 3.1 million, China – 3.3. million]
How many 2006 college graduates in India speak English?
[graphic indicating 100%]
In 10 years it is predicted that the number on English speaking country in the world will be . . .
China.
Who would have predicted this 60 years ago? (then 60 is replaced with 40, then 20]
Did you know?
According to the U.S. Department of Labor
1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer less than one year.
1 in 2 workers has been with their current employer less than five years.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learners will have . . .
10 to 14 jobs . . .
by their 38th birthday
Many of today’s college majors didn’t exist 10 years ago
New media
Organic agriculture
e-business
Nanotechnology
Homeland security
What will they study 10 years from now?
Today’s 21-year-olds have:
Watched 20,000 hours of TV
Played 10,000 hours of video games
Talked 10,000 hours on the phone
And they’ve sent/received 250,000 emails or instant messages
More than 50% of U.S. 21-year-olds have created content on the web
More than 70% of U.S. 4-year-olds have used a computer
Years it took to reach a market audience of 50 million
[graphic indicating Radio – 38 years, TV – 13 years, Internet – 4 years]
Number of Internet devices in 1984: 1,000
1992 – 1,000,000
2006 – 600,000,000
Did you know?
We are living in exponential times
The first commercial text message was sent in December 1992
The number of text messages sent and received today . . .
exceeds the population of the planet
The Internet started being widely used by the general public in early 1995
1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. in 2005 . . .
met online
Revenue for eBay in 2006: $1.7 billion
eBay was founded in 1996
There were more than 2.7 billion searches performed on Google . . .
. . . this month
To whom were those questions directed B.G.?
(Before Google)
MySpace Visitors
[graphic from 0 in 2003 to almost 60,000,000 in 2006]
More than 230,000 new users signed up for MySpace . . .
today
If MySpace were a country . . .
it would be the 8th largest in the world
YouTube visitors since September 2005
[graphic from 0 in 2005 to well over 100,000,000 today]
Did you know?
There are more than 540,000 words in the English language . . .
about five times as many as during Shakespeare’s time
[graphic with the words: widget, web-surfer, blog, dot-commer, e-learner, Internet]
More than 3,000 books were published . . .
. . . today
The amount of technical information is doubling every two years
By 2010, it’s predicted to double . . .
every 72 hours
Third generation fiber optics has recently been tested that push 10 trillion bits per second down a fiber
That is 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second
It’s currently tripling every six months
The fiber is already there, they’re just improving the switches on the end . . .
which means the marginal cost of these improvements is effectively . . .
zero
Nearly 2 billion children live in developing countries
One in three never completes fifth grade
In 2005 the One Laptop per Child Project (OLPC) set out to provide laptops to these children
The first shipments should be in mid-2007
Kids who have never held a textbook will now hold the world
And be connected . . .
to you
Predictions are that by the time
children born in 2007 are 6 years old,
a supercomputer’s computation capabilities
will exceed
that of the human brain
And while predictions further out than 15 years are hard to do . . .
[graphic indicating 2049]
a $1,000 computer
will exceed the computing capabilities
of the human race
what does this all mean?
[graphic indicating: shift happens]
We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist . . . in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
Did you know . . .
There are students in China, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, and the USA who
[graphic switches from: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create, communicate, collaborate]
on projects
every day
Ask Your Kids: Are you doing this in school?
Ask Your Principal: How are you helping my child become literate in the 21st century?
Ask Your School Board: Are you providing the resources and training necessary to prepare students to be successful in 21st century society?
Ask Your Elected Representatives: Now that you know all this, what changes should be made to current education legislation?
What’s your vision?
Did you know . . .
The original version of this presentation was created for a Colorado (USA) high school staff of 150 in August of 2006
to start a conversation about what our students need to be successful in the 21st century
By June 2007 it had started more than 5 million conversations around the world
And now that you know, we want you to join the conversation
Visit shifthappens.wikispaces.com
Did you know?
Developed by Karl Fisch
thefischbowl.blogspot.com
with assistance from Scott McLeod
dangerouslyirrelevant.org
Designed by XPLANE
xplane.com
shifthappens.wikispaces.com
Timeboxing as a Productivity Strategy
Timeboxing is time management method and a productivity strategy.
We’ve all been there – we have a project or a deadline to meet, and time is running out. Most people have difficulty staying focused on open ended tasks, or they seem overwhelmed if they have a lot of tasks to complete in a day. Timeboxing can help in many of these situations.
If you’ve never heard of it before, don’t worry – you’re not alone. However, timeboxing is quickly becoming more popular with people who need to arrange their time better, as it can be used in a variety of ways. So what exactly is timeboxing?
If you work for someone else, your manager may Timebox for you. In the simplest terms, when your boss says, “Jones, you have 4 hours to finish that report, do the best you can!” He has just, timeboxed for you.
You may already Timebox in your personal life. For example, you may need to buy a gifts for some friends. However, you work during the day, weekends you want to relax, and evening shopping isn’t really for you. But you still need to get that shopping trip completed. So you look at how your time is spent at weekends, and factor in how much time you can allocate realistically to your shopping trip. Then decide what gifts you need to buy beforehand, and what shops you’ll need to go to. You head out to the store at 8pm, knowing that they close at 9pm. Essentially, you’ve boxed your time – you’re going to complete the task by 9pm no matter what it takes – even it it requires compromise.
Timeboxing works by completing any work that you have to the best of your abilities in the agreed timescale – anything you can’t do within that timescale is left incomplete. While this may mean that you have an unfinished task, it’s only unfinished from your original plan – this is because by “timeboxing,” that is, by fitting the task into a specific timeframe, you’ve come up with an alternative version that does what is needed (within the time constraint you set).
Digest Widget – Text to RTF for Sony Reader & Amazon Kindle
DigestWidget is the fastest way to get formatted text into your Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle.
I find myself most often using my eBook reader to read free books and documents from the web that I want to read away from the computer. So, with the DigestWidget, I can either copy the files to a folder and process them as a batch, or if I’m reading something online, I can highlight the text I want to capture and copy it to the clipboard to instantly make a file I can copy to my eBook reader.
- A text digest is ideal for off-line reading of long articles and newsletters you receive by e-mail.
- These digests contain text only and no images.
- Print digests to save paper
- Create and read digests in the best font style and size for your Sony Reader or other device.
Read the digest files on your eBook Reader / Smart Phone / PDA or other portable device
DigestWidget makes text digests from your Windows Clipboard / Outlook e-mail files (.eml) / Text files (.txt) / Saved web pages (.html)
DigestWidget allows you to select one of three font styles and several font sizes. It automatically left and right “justifies” the You can also select the folder where the batch files will be read and in which the digest will be written. DigestWidget removes multiple line feeds and “cleans up” the text before making the digest file.
- DigestWidget can read a batch of files in a folder and convert them to a single RTF digest file.
- DigestWidget can write a text digest of everything you copy to your Windows clipboard. A new capture session is started each time you start the DigestWidget.
- The Digest files can be directly copied to the reader or directly to an SD card and inserted into the reader. No additional conversion or formatting is required.
I’ve probably spent about 25 hours working on the Digest Widget, and I’ve taken it as far as I want to go with it. However, it seems to me that someone who either knows the free AutoIt language may want to change or improve the program I’ve written. So, I’m publishing DigestWidget, including the Autoit source code,
Your derivative works from my source code must include this attribution:
“This program derived from DigestWidget from Chuck Eglinton and ChuckEgg.com”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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