Author: Christopher Roberts

Christopher's Author Bio: Founder and editor of Technology Bloggers, Christopher is passionate about sustainable technology and environmental initiatives. He wants to popularise critical thinking, promote responsible innovation, and excite you about the world around us.

Will Facebook start charging users?

19 Replies Christopher Roberts

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There’s a lot of rumours going around about how the social media giant, Facebook, is going to start charging its users for keeping a profile. This is definitely not true. Facebook issued a statement recently stating that they had absolutely no plan or intention of charging their customers.

Even though the internet is in no short supply of unfounded rumours and gossip, it’s not hard to believe where average users would have gotten the idea.

These rumours spread across the internet for fear that many changes would be made to Facebook’s price structure. The rumour is largely a hoax, but many have been worried about the substantial changes occurring to Facebook that are planned in the upcoming months.

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced the most dramatic change yet to the social site and will implement the “timeline” feature. It will take all of your information and create a timeline of your life.

Facebook's LogoZuckerberg is extremely excited about the change, but most people aren’t so thrilled. Some argue, that this is just another move by Facebook that greatly infringes on users’ online information and privacy. Either way, it’s site is free and will remain free for the foreseeable future.

Facebook simply wouldn’t survive a charge based membership services. There’s too much competition in the social media scene right now. Anything remotely resembling fees would sound the death of Facebook’s online supremacy.

Though it makes many wonder if there might come a time when social media sources will eventually switch to a pay system. Across the board, right now, we’re seeing some online features, once free to everyone, now being charged for or in the process of it.

Presently, most online social media sites depend largely on advertising as their main revenue stream. With millions of users interacting with these sites, advertisers are able to gain massive exposure.

Yet, it’s this issue that’s raised a lot of concerns and has begged the question, “Is Facebook selling your information to advertisers?” Facebook has vehemently denied these allegations, but it’s still unclear. For right now, no, Facebook will not charge for using it’s site, but no one can tell what the future of social media could bring.

Steve Jobs – remembering a legend

20 Replies Christopher Roberts

Steve Jobs, co-founder, chairman and chief executive of Apple – one of the biggest, most profitable and most well known brands around the world.

Unfortunately, yesterday, Steve Jobs has passed away, aged 56.

Many believe that Apple is where it is because of this remarkable man, and say that without him, Apple would most probably have failed many years ago.

Jobs was a one of the kind sort of man. He was for many years the face of Apple, as it seemed that nobody could ever really match his charisma, innovation or genius.

When the firm was struggling in the 1990’s, Jobs returned, and saved the business, setting it on its path to become the second most widely used global operating system.

In 2003 Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He took leave three times between 2003 and 2010, before finally resigning as CEO in August 2011, because of fears over his health.

Jobs was one of the richest men in the world when he died, and was also one of the most well known and influential people of modern times.

It is said that Apple’s marketing department used to consisted of Jobs looking in his mirror and asking himself what he wanted.

Apple’s competitor Google has paid tribute to Jobs on the home page of its global search engines.

Google's Tribute to Steve JobsThe link on Google’s home page leads to Apple’s homepage, which has a tribute to its maker, which takes up the entire page – just showing how important he was to the company.

Apple's tribute to Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs on the home page of Apple, as a tribute to the man who many believe made the company a success

If you click on his picture, you are taken to a page which pay’s tribute to the legend in the classic Apple way – a clear, white page, with just a paragraph of text paying tribute to him.

Apple's tribute paragraph to Steve Jobs

A paragraph featured on Apple’s site, paying tribute to Steve Jobs

Today the world has lost a great man, and has been left many unanswered questions.

Who will take over from Jobs? Will Apple now become just another technology giant, lacking in personality, eventually destined for decline and failure?

RIP Steve Jobs

The world’s most powerful radio telescope is now functioning!

13 Replies Christopher Roberts

One of the best places to put a telescope is in the Atacama Desert, which is on the boarder of Chile and Peru – currently there are around 20 telescopes (both radio and optical) functioning in the area.

The Alma telescope

In the last few days, the world’s largest radio telescope, the Alma telescope, has began to function. Currently the telescope is made up of around 20 massive antenna dishes, which work in harmony to produce amazingly detailed pictures of outer space.

The project has input from all around the world, with Europe, North America, East Asia and the Republic of Chile forming a partnership, all doing their bit to add more antenna dishes and improve the telescope.

The ALMA Telescope

The antenna dishes that currently make up the telescope ALMA Telescope

When the project is completed, (hopefully within the next 20 years if all goes to plan) the telescope will have a whopping 66 dishes at its disposal, all of which it can use to gaze at the stars in fantastic detail!

Why the Atacama Desert?

You are probably wondering why the Atacama Desert is such a hotspot for telescope activity. Well there are a number of reasons, but the main ones are that it has clear skies almost all the time, in addition to very dry air – meaning that its hard for humans to breath there due to low oxygen levels, but for the telescopes, that means very little interference from anything in the space above.

Furthermore, the desert has many high flat areas, meaning that telescopes can be closer to the atmosphere, meaning even less interference. In addition to this, because the Atacama is a desert, it has virtually no light pollution. Basically it is an astronomer’s dream location!

Is it working?

The project has only been live for less than a week now, but already some stunning high detailed pictures of space area already beginning to emerge. Below is one of these great pictures:

ALMA Telescope deep space picture

A picture of deep space made possible by the ALMA Telescope

Because the light we can see here on earth is often millions, if not billions of years old, we are able to see into the past when looking up at the sky, using super powerful telescopes like the Alma one.

Scientists believe that we will be able to see events that happened just 400 million years after the big bang, due to the light delay, hence enabling us to understand better than ever before the formation of the early universe.

The Alma telescope is just one small cog in our planets fascinating scientific road of discovery, however one thing’s for sure: this ‘small cog’ should be able to help us understand a lot more about the universe than ever before!