Yaron Benchlouch

Google Chrome Review

2 comments Posted by Yaron Benchlouch at 10:31 PM

One of the greatest achievements of the IT company, Google is its introduction of its brand new product 'Google Chrome'. Google unveiled its new browser to the world promising new features and limitless capabilities to explore the web in an unrestricted way. Like any browser Google Chrome will be tested on several key features: Speed, Ease of Use, Compatibility and Security. Google had many obstacles to hurdle over, especially when competing with Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. When examining the interface of Google Chrome we come to understand that one of its best assets is its lack of clutter. The browser has a sleek veneer that reflects its aim of simplifying the browser and the cluster of buttons found on other web-browsers. The welcome screen displays the most frequently visited websites that you go to so you can easily navigate to the websites that you often visit.

Notice on the left hand side how Google's welcome screen is laid out for users to navigate to the 9 most frequently visited webpages. Another exciting feature in Chrome is the navigation speed and its startup speed. Google worked on a code that allows Chrome to use a small amount of computer memory and gives it the power to move from one page to another in lightning fast speed. By all means it is faster than Firefox and Safari.

Another feature that Google chrome has integrated is the Security applications that protect users from Spam, Pop-Ups, Advertisements, Phishing and other types of Hacking aimed to steal personal information from users browsing the web. If someone wants to remain anonymous on the web, Google has a security feature that can tell the computer not to store any information (cookies) so that people dont store information from the web. This sandbox feature gives users greater security and anonymity on the web freeing them from spam users and other hackers.

Google Chrome is by far the fastest and most reliable web browser on the market and I highly recommend it.

You can download it completely free right here: Download

The Gospel According to Larry Review

2 comments Posted by Yaron Benchlouch at 7:04 AM

So who is Josh Swensen? Some bold teenager armed with a keyboard and blog to educate and challange the people in his community to change the status quo? Or is he the coward that people depict him as threatening to upset society by instigating civil anarchy? Josh Swensen is of little interest to the world, he has no friends nothing to preoccupy his time and intellect but he does have a lot to say even though he isnt able to stand up and speak. Like many teenagers Josh has a computer and a blog in which he speaks about anti-consumerism a seemingly arbitrary topic to many of us. Josh creates an image through which he disperses his message of indpendence from corporate entanglement. As the topic begins to catch interest and change social order he becomes frightened of the power he has amassed and even abuses it for his own purposes. As admirable as his crusade may be he is too frightened to reveal himself and take down the fascade he created for himself. I truly admire his efforts to 'chane the world' but truth be told I think that his motives arent as genuine as he claims them to be, the point of writing a blog is to spread a message of some sort to as many people as you can. Josh writes as an outlet for his fears, lonliness, bordeom and even depression (for his mother) and claims from the get-go that he never expected nor wanted his blog to become popular. Josh claims to be a loner, he doesnt like it when too many people participate in what he does, he wouldnt be the one to join a school club or go to the mall. When his blog becomes famous he doesnt know how to handle it, he becomes consumed by it and several times he even uses the blog out of his own self interest to impress Beth. The book outlines many of the ambitions that Josh has but in the end we come to understand that his ambitions and efforts were ultimately driven by genuine initiative to make the world a better place. To anyone who thinks about reading this book understand this: I am a person who doesnt like to read, it isnt tedious or trivial but it is something that I rarely do out of pleasure. This book was truly one of the better books I have ever read, it consumes you and overwhelms you in such a manner that you feel that somehow you want Josh to succeed.

I read it, I loved it

Googlezon

1 comments Posted by Yaron Benchlouch at 8:53 AM

EPIC 2014 challenges us to consider what may be the most vigorous and fervent battle between the two biggest IT companies in the world, Google and Microsoft. In the plot Google merges with Amazon and consolidates all its power into the "Google Grid" a universal platform for storing and publishing multimedia information. This plot illustrates an apocalyptic scenario in which the two superpowers of the internet wage war with one another to aggregate and deliver news on the internet in a customized, personalized, efficient way. In a way the fear factor of this video instills the notion that EPIC evolves in a cancerous way, it aggrandizes by consolidating companies and features such as Amazon's A9 search engine slowly eliminating the competition and monopolizing the internet and incorporating it into the grid. Eventually, news agencies are forced off the web because they cannot compete with Google News' unparalleled diversification and limitless options. Google uses the RSS Feed to consolidate all the articles from all the news agencies into one forum where it is sorted to your custom and personalized taste.

In the video Google slowly becomes the internet offering features such as shopping, IM, email, news, weather etc... into one format. In essence Google slowly casts its grip around the world wide web eliminating its competitors one by one, it teams up with Amazon to edge out Microsoft who fights fervently to retain some sort of technological and innovative edge over Google but loses to Google's newest products: the Grid and EPIC. EPIC is Google's doomsday device, the Atomic Bomb of its war to permanently end the slow and painful death of competing companies. Google unleashes EPIC to custom tailor all news to its audience constructing news from excerpts of information on the web, through EPIC it forces NYTimes to take down its website. At the end of the movie the narration ends ominously with "Perhaps there was another way".

Implications of Media on Society

1 comments Posted by Yaron Benchlouch at 1:56 AM

2008 marked an unprecedented augmentation and change of human interaction. The internet, the fastest growing medium, has essentially created a network for communication, distribution, and information. The internet and multimedia which is distributed throughout it has reformed the way people perform their daily duties and recreational activities. With over one billion people with access to the internet, it has become more than a simple data bank of information and basic websites. The internet has evolved to an interface where we can communicate with one another, buy, watch videos, access the news, and find entertainment. In essence cyberspace, websites and the tasks we perform have been transformed by the implementation of mass-media on the internet. The internet has overtaken every single aspect of our lives and accommodated it into one platform. Postal services have turned into emails, phone calls and text messages into IM, newspapers into news feeds, and board games into video games. Multimedia on internet is responsible for enhancing the way we interact with cyberspace. News is broadcasted live on websites with videos as well as access to archives. A person is able to listen to the news at any point of the day and access archives to review past events. Recreational activities are almost entirely performed through the internet with online video games and facebook networking. Facebook and instant messaging technologies simulate and substitute to some great extent human interaction. Even tedious tasks such as shopping have been made possible on the internet, now every major clothing conglomerate sells their product through the internet and delivers to your door. Despite the accommodations and convenience that are established through the internet multimedia is overtaking many necessary duties that we need to perform. As consumers we are faced with the prospect of doing groceries and Christmas shopping through online department stores such as Amazon.com and eBay.

Multimedia has transformed the internet in terms of its aesthetics to the point where it has become unrecognizable. Videos, music, high digital quality images, and appealing graphics have organized the web with its myriad of information into a place that is inviting and navigable. Multimedia allows us to broadcast things like television shows, radio shows (podcasts), or even us on our webcams on a medium accessible to millions. Multimedia has diversified the type of media that we can find on the web. The internet has become littered with animations, visualizations, and interactive applications which allow the users to communicate and interact with the information and users on the web. Multimedia has transformed other platforms of communications such as cellular phones. Today, it is possible to watch tv shows, sports games, and play games live from your 3^rd generation cellular phone. Multimedia enhanced the way we communicate on cell phones as well; today we can handle a video call with others and send photos from our mobile phones to other people.

The greatest fear or repercussion that could arise from the expanded applications of multimedia is the idea that one day multimedia may control not most, but all the duties and chores we perform during our lives. This silent revolution is already underway, communication, interaction and recreation are already under the control of the internet. The internet has become a microcosm of our society there are people who police it, people who violate it, and people who commit crimes on it (hackers, identity theft). We are entering an age where we have our identities in the web as well as in real life. We have an address, profiles, credit card numbers, transactions, communications, and search histories embedded somewhere among the disordered and chaotic pages of the internet.

The New York Times Response

0 comments Posted by Yaron Benchlouch at 9:19 AM

Respond to the following prompt: "In the New York Times article, the author writes: 'Indeed a manipulated image, which is often more powerful than the sum of its parts, can affect not just visual perception but opinions as well.' What specific power do photos have to tell the truth, and how should photojournalists and news editors respect this power? What specific guidelines should photojournalists and news editors take to limit image manipulations, posed events, and other types of fakery? What counts as manipulation and what counts as reasonable editing, cropping or enhancement?

A very common and useful technique employed by photographers and photo-journalists is editing photos and merging certain aspects of two photos to create a completely different product. It is fair to suggest that all news agencies and magazines in some way edit their photos, either enhancing the image or manipulating it to serve their editorial goals. However for an audience that doesn't understand photo manipulation, digital enhancement, and cropping it is very difficult to establish or even differentiate between a fake photo and a real one. This is an increasing problem for people who want accurate and unaltered information from their media sources. One example of this was established in class when we closely examined the John Kerry - Jane Fonda photo. Many news viewers were infuriated by what they thought was an authentic photograph of Kerry and Fonda at an anti-war rally. That image and others like it caused people to become outraged and to question Kerry as a political candidate. This situation became the epitome of the ramifications of digital photo manipulation. A person's reputation was denigrated and damaged by a circulated photo of unknown origin orchestrated by an anonymous author.

Various institutions and the public realize that this increasing problem calls for a unique way to identify and tag photos so their authenticity may be verified and their owner be contacted. In class we examined the possible use of watermarking, a tool which will allow us to verify the photographer and the copy-write owner in case of any problems. The viability of watermarking and digital identification is certainly an option that must be considered. This solution would allow agencies that broadcast these photos to verify their authenticity and force them to recognize the copy-write issues surrounding its use. In addition to this we discussed several limitations which could be imposed on journalists to curb the amount of manipulated, forged, and altered photographs circulating the web. We came to the conclusion that in some cases it is necessary for the editor to enhance the image for better clarity, contrast, lighting so that it can be viewed by the audience however to manipulate the image in any way beyond what was mentioned would be altering the image completely. Nevertheless even image enhancement has been abused in the past; such was evident with Time's mug-shot photo of O.J Simpson. The only way to ensure the authenticity and validity of images is to completely block any attempt to change the image, however this would be detrimental to images with poor lighting and insufficient contrast. I conclude that there is no 'safe' way to ensure that images wont be altered and therefore we need to become more astute and objective towards photographs and agencies which try to pass on fraudulent images.