Budgee the Robot

Are you tired of carrying around your groceries? Is it a struggle to walk around the mall with all kinds of bags? If so, then Budgee is here to help.  This new robot is designed to be by your side and do all these tasks for you.  First introduced on Kickstarter, Budgee is a one of a kind robot to help with carrying your every day things so you don't have to anymore.

Though this project failed on Kickstarter due to its cost, over $1,000 a piece, Budgee is pretty neat and will surely be a lot more popular in the future.  Controlled by your smartphone, you can control nearly every aspect of this robot.  You simply decide various parts of the robot through your smart phone, such as the distance it travels behind you, the eye color and different speeds of traveling.  Budgee can carry up to 50 lbs and travel at a staggering 4 miles per hour.

Though this product failed on Kickstarter, I feel that we will see a rise in this type of technology very soon.  As today's society keeps moving towards producing goods that can complete our every day tasks, I think that Budgee will be located in many stores and households.  In order for this to happen, I feel that the owners of the technology need to lower the cost to produce the product, advertise on social media platforms about what they are doing, and potentially sell this product to a major company such as Microsoft or Sony.  By selling their technology, the newer and larger companies have more of an advantage with more money to put toward further developing it, and advertising it better because of their brand name.

source:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/crazy-or-genius-gadgets/
http://5elementsrobotics.com/budgee-video/

Snapping Money

Recently there has been a lot of talk over the use of money on social media websites.  Some big names include Facebook and Instagram who allow you to make purchases through their platforms, but another big name is joining in the race.   Snapchat has released that they are in the midst of developing a way to snap checks and other forms of payment via Snapchat.  Partnered with the payment firm Square, the user will have the option to take a picture of their debit or credit card and be able to make payments via sending Snaps.



This new payment system is called SnapCash and includes some pretty interesting features.  For the payment to work, the user needs to have entered all their card information into their respective Snapchat accounts on their mobile device.  Once this is done, the user can decide whether to send the payment when they send snap, and the individual receiving the payment has 24 hours to accept the payment.  If they do not accept the payment within the 24 hour period, then Snapchat will cancel the payment, and like regular snaps, it will disappear. 

Though this seems like a pretty flawless idea and includes some nice safety features, I still feel very nervous about even considering putting my bank card on snap chat.  With all the recent hacking incidents going on across the world, I don't necessarily think this is a very safe thing for hundreds of thousands of people to do.

source:
http://time.com/money/3592310/snapchat-snap-money-cash-friends-peer-to-peer/

Class Work- Social Media and the Blackout at LVC

Feb. 19^th 2015

Social Media has seemed to take on a life of its own at LVC. The blackout seemed to spark anger but surprisingly took a humor spin as well. For example: #LVCBlackout2015, #LVCHellWeek. Some people even said that LVC was giving up power for Lent. 

As a response LVC memes and athletics responded by trying to keep people calm about it. They used humorous Facebook posts and Twitter tweets to try and keep student’s spirits up. They tried to keep everyone entertained. Although this helped the college took a long time to respond to the innocent. It lasted for 2 hours and it took the college 30 minutes to respond and send an email to everyone and let them know what was going on.

They could have emailed the students faster to inform them what was going on.  It would have made it a lot easier on the students because they were most likely in a panic. It seems like LVC hasn’t been really responsive to emergency situations and I think they need to change their way of doing things. It will not only make it better for the students but also for the parents. That way they won’t have to worry about their child being in an emergency situation, they will know that everything is being taken care of. Its also might be a good idea for them to notify the parents when something like this happens so that they can feel like they are kept in the loop. At least they cancelled tests and quizzes, that’s always nice. On a more positive note the LVC Bookstore is having a 50% off clearance items today only… but who can afford those prices. The Goodwill and Wal-Mart are always the best way to go. 

Hockey World takes to Twitter over Ovechkin's Slash

Being a huge hockey fanatic, I constantly get updates about what is going on in the hockey world both from the NHL app and social media accounts.  On February 17, 2015 one of the biggest names in hockey, Alex Ovechkin, committed a serious penalty against another popular individual (Kris Letang) that left many the hockey world is shear shock.  On a play entering the penguins zone, Ovechkin clearly slashed Letang across the foot and caused him to be helped off the ice.  There was no call on the play, and the home fans in Pittsburgh made sure that the officials knew that they were upset.  Not only did they verbally voice their opinions over the subject, thousands of fans took to Twitter and posted about the call and how they felt about it.

Most of these tweets were not positive in Ovechkin's favor, as videos and pictures of the incident flooded hockey based accounts across the globe.  The twitter account WDAE 620AM, which is the social media site for a sports based radio station, posted multiple tweets about the altercation including videos, articles and other major account posts.  This specific account is a very credible source for sports information, having over 120 thousand tweets and 15.8 thousand followers, which leads me to believe that by releasing their opinion over the call that they influenced many individuals who hadn't already seen the video beforehand.  Overall it will be very interesting to see if the league deals with the call, and what will happen to the reputation Ovechkin has because of the strong opinions of thousands of users on social media sites have now portrayed him to be.

source:
https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=ovechkin%20slash&src=tyah
https://twitter.com/620wdae

Shhhhh it's Secret

One of the newest and fastest growing social media apps in todays social media world Secret, is making a lot of noise (haha).  Secret looks like a combination of many different very successful social media sites all piled into one.  With the design and graphics of Instagram, the reliability of Facebook and the secrecy of Yik Yak, Secret has really taken off in 2015.  The idea behind Secret is to be able to share whats on your mind at any given time with a nice picture behind it, and most importantly to remain totally anonymous.  Other users can comment on your post and ask simple questions on your post such as "yes" or "no" questions in order to keep the user anonymous to the social media world.  Individuals can also like posts as they could in mental models of other social media platforms.

Though Yik Yak didn't ever really take off and seemed to be a fab for about a year, I think that Secret has the potential to be successful for a while.  By having the same feature as Yik Yak, yes the aesthetics of other major companies, I believe that users will want to use this site much more.  By doing so, the network affect would carry over and Secret would continue to spread across the world via social networking.  Time will only tell to see if a major social network company such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter can buy out this company or if the app fails completely.   But my best prediction is that this app will succeed and become much more common on many individuals phones within the next few years.

source:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/features/social-networks/3587091/5-new-social-media-apps-that-could-be-big-in-2015/

https://www.secret.ly

Moving Facebook in a New Direction

Not only is Facebook one of the most popular social media platforms on the World Wide Web today, Facebook is taking new steps to work their way into your every day life.  Users can now load their credit/debit card information into Facebook and pay individuals right through the site.  Not only is this convenient for the company as they are now involving themselves in a totally new area of business, but it is also very convent for Facebook's users.  Individuals using the social media site can now stay on the same site and cut out third party services such as PayPal, as Facebook would take care of the transaction for them.

After doing further research on the changes Facebook is making including the new money privacy agreement, I'm not too sure I would look to add my credit card information into Facebook.  Though this site is a very respectable and reliable social media site, I just can't wrap my mind around adding something that important to a social media site.  I understand that the use of social media sites are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our every day lives, but I think a line needs to be created dealing with some subjects.  As Facebook continues to grow, I believe that many individuals will use Facebook's money transaction service, however I do not think the majority of users will be willing to put their credit card information on Facebook.  I think that this service will be short lived and not be as successful as many believe it will be, as the issue of hacking continues to rise and thousands of people having their identity and card numbers stolen every day.

source:

http://time.com/3590866/social-media-2015/

http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2014/09/23/ryan-holmes-why-twitter-facebook-and-apple-suddenly-want-to-handle-your-money/

Let Your Voice be Heard on Social Media....Literally

Bubbly is a one of a kind social media site that seems to be a mix of Twitter, Instagram and your microphone. Instead of reading posts like you would on every other social media platform, you can now listen to what people are saying.  You can literally hear their thoughts and what they have to say rather then read a post.  Bubbly has already gained over 40 million users over the past few months and has spread from California to China.  Built for both mobile and desktop use, the interface of Bubbly.net appears to be very similar to the layout of twitter.  It allows the users the ability to like, comment and share posts of other users that they follow. One of the biggest advertising strategies that Bubbly has developed is the use of recruiting popular celebrities from different countries.  Individuals such as Salman Knahn and Rio Ferdinand are currently using this new social media platform and are constantly updating their profiles for their users. By recruiting popular individuals from other countries then just the United States, Bubbly has the ability to expand much farther and much faster globally.

Though Bubbly shows much promise with this their marketing and web layout, I do not think that this social media site will be able to compete with other competitors.  I think that having to listen out loud to posts will not incline users to leave other sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  The "extra work" of having to plug in head phones or have the individuals around you listen to the posts with you I believe will draw people away from using Bubbly.  Though this a good idea and has a different twist on how we use social media, I think that it may be to different for most individuals. 

Only time will tell however...

source:

http://bubbly.net

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2014/12/17/15-social-media-companies-to-watch-in-2015/

A New Social Media Platform that Will be Making Some Noise in 2015

When thinking about social media sites, most individuals think of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram right away.  However, a new site called Unmetric, released in 2015, will surely be causing quite a stir very very soon in the social media realm.  Unmetric is unlike any other social media platform every developed before, and this uniqueness will surely set it apart from other competitors for a long time.  This company strives on being just like everyone else and wants to keep it this way.  For instance, Unmentric claims that 80% of their employees take public transportation to and from work and that a third of all employees have a post graduate degree.

Unmetric.com is a data based company to primary help further develop your company.  Using analytics and other e-commerce strategies, they strive on taking companies and further expanding their businesses in the social market.  Though they are primarily a data based company, for your original fee, they are willing to help expand your companies reach within other social media sites.  Unmetric is the first of its kind and seem like it will surely do very well in todays market as social media becomes a bigger part in every day life for many individuals.  However with Unmetric revealing this new way of strategic planning for businesses, I'm sure that many other companies will start to develop sectors within their businesses that are very similar to Unmetric.

Source:

https://unmetric.com
http://www.forbes.com/