Just a Thought!

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How Does It Work: The Internet

The Internet. We ALL know what it is. We're on it right now actually. You use it to search for stuff you might not know yourself. You use it to buy whatever you want at any hour and have it delivered directly to  your front door. You use it to play games with people half way around the world. You even use it to talk to friends or make friends. Hell, statistics show 1 in 5 couples now even met online. But have you ever stopped to think what exactly you just did? Did you ever try and contemplate what the Internet even is? I'm almost sure you haven't.

The Internet can best be described as a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users world wide. (found using the define: function, Google)

Okay. Pause.

What on earth does that mean? Let me borrow a super common Internet phrase. Basically, you could think of the Internet as a series of tubes. Now, think of each computer having one tube that connects to a main tube. Now picture this main tube going down every road, passing virtually every home in the world. That's just about the magnitude of the Internet.



Try to use this as your tubes. Let each individual tube be the tube to your computer and each collection of tubes be one main tube.



(If my tube explanation doesn't help you, and you're more of a literal person, check this article by Discovery here.)



Homeland Security's Emblem

These 'tubes' are publicly owned. Well, technically their publicly shared. So, they're not owned at all. And when you think about it, that's probably one of the best things about it. It's a publicly shared network controlled by the people who use it. It is, however, monitored by higher powers such as The Internet Society, a nonprofit organization created in 1992 to overlook how Internet protocol is created and how we use the Internet to interact, and Law Enforcement agencies like Cyber Patrol or even Homeland Security.

So, just a quick recap. The Internet is a series of publicly shared tubes which connect to main tubes eventually connecting your tube to the tube of every computer in the world. Sound complicated? It shouldn't. If it does, then you probably wouldn't be able to fathom how complicated the actual Internet is. Now, I could spit out a bunch of acronyms and complex terms but that's not my job here. My job is to make complicated tech simple, and bring it to people like you. For a more in depth look at how the internet functions, check out Discovery Channel's How Stuff Works here or The Internet Society's pages about the Internet here.

Flip Video Recorder: Why They're the Ultimate Spring-time Tech Toy

Picture this, it's warm out (finally) and you're at the park. Any park, your favorite park! You're with your friends, family, complete strangers, it doesn't really matter. What does matter, is that you're having an awesome time.  You're doing whatever it is you like, you're running, you're playing baseball, football,  soccer, you're riding your bike even! You could even just be laying in the shade by a tree. And you wish, man I wish I could record this and share with the world or maybe even just myself but this crappy phone camera just doesn't cut it! Well here's your solution!

The Flip Ultra HD 8GB Featured in Black

The Flip (shown left) Ultra HD is a small little package with a big surprise inside! The Flip is a 4.5 ounce, 4.16 inch tall power house! It packs the punch of any video recorder in this small, coin purse size package! It has a 2 inch screen and a 1280x720 video recording resolution which provides a crisp and clear picture, an image stabilizer and a frame rate of 60 fps (frames per second) which means the quality during playback will be outstanding. The higher the frames per second, the better the quality. The playback quality is 720HD which is extremely high for a small hand-held. The camera records in MP4 format which is used universally for audio/video playback on iPhones and computers (but not Androids)! It features built in speakers and a wide-range stereo microphone for audio recording. As for the battery, Flip did something really convenient. You have the option of using your lithium-ion, same basic battery as your cell-phone, or you can use 3 AAA batteries! The battery pack provides about an hour to 2 hours of record time and charges in 2 hours using the battery charger or 4 hours using the USB port! As well as a USB port, it also has an HDMI port so you can hook this bad boy up straight to your TV for video play back. You can even mount it to your tri-pod if you so desire.

The Flip Ultra HD 8GB Interface

The Flip's interface is really easy to use. It features large buttons below the 2 inch screen. It has you standard play, fast forward, rewind, and pause buttons making it simple and easy. It also has the ability to set a date and time to your video recordings!

The Flip comes in a few different variants: Flip Ultra HD with 4 or 8 GB of memory, Flip Mino HD with either 4 or 8 GB, or Slide HD with 16 GB of memory (4 hours of recording time). The Flip featured in this article is the Flip Ultra HD with 8 GB of memory. The Flip Ultra is for sale on Amazon in white or black at the link below or on Flip's official website in black, white, or with a customizable design scheme here.

Urgent! Dell Coupon Code for Laptops!

Whenever there's something urgent in the tech world, whatever that may be, you know I'm here to help. And as far as I'm concerned, 15% off a laptop lasting only to 4/4/2011 sounds pretty urgent to me.

Dell Inspiron Mini Laptop

According to Dell's twitter, they're offering 15% off their Inspiron Mini-Laptops! The code they've given on their twitter is K4SBFS540RB34N ! Enter this code at checkout when you purchase your laptop online here!

Kindle 3G - Worth the hype?

The Amazon Kindle 3G is an Amazon top seller as of late. But what is it exactly?

The Kindle 3G (shown left), is a wireless e-reader which has reportedly beaten out all the other tablets in the e-book department.  It packs a 6 inch E Ink Pearl display and darker fonts which a huge step above other tablets because it solves the problem anyone with a hand-held suffers from: GLARE! In addition to its industry leading e-book reading capabilities, it also has an enhanced PDF reader so you can upload any file and view it for whatever need. Battery life is pretty good on it as well. The Kindle 3G (the model I'm covering in this article) will last you 10 days if your wireless is on and up to 1 month with wireless off. The Kindle's keyboard features well spaced out keys and a direction (D) pad for easy handling.  The big advance given by the 3G is the Webkit-based browser which now allows you to surf the web as long as you're in a WiFi or 3G coverage area. Amazon also pays for your 3G coverage with no billing what so ever.

Now, Amazon's Kindle 3G sounds good. But is it worth the hype?

Amazon Kindle 3G shown with keyboard and D-pad (mentioned above)

I think so. The Kindle is popular amongst people who really are only interested in a sole purpose e-reader. Anybody in business or in a simply academic mind set would find the Kindle ideal for what they want. And for those who got the Kindle just for these purposes, they were nothing short of amazed. It is by far the best e-reader on the market with its ability to store up to 3,500 books at any given time and load whole books in 60 seconds with its fast network capabilities. Interested? Check it out below!

Weekly Flash: Bowman 2

Bowman 2

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Robot of the Week: Dr. Toilet

Dr. Toilet - Scrubs

Robot of the Week has arrived with its very first segment! What a way to start off, with Dr. Toilet. Not to be confused with the famous Dr. Toilet of hit TV show Scrubs, this Dr. Toilet is an invention that makes me wonder what our lives will be like just 5 or 10 years down the road. Now, everybody knows anything electronic we have in the US, Japan's had for a while now. But this one kind of takes the cake.

Dr. Toilet is a normal toilet first and foremost. But on top of that, it's capable of reading abnormalities in your feces or urine (#2 or #1) and alerting you to any problems. It can also check your blood sugar and body fat. The potential is pretty awesome when you think about it. How many health problems can be avoided by a small urine or blood screening? How many illnesses can be detected in early stages with tests during every bathroom visit? Countless.

Right now, there's not a whole lot out about it. It's main area of operation is Japan, the world's leader in technology and intellectual toilets. For now and the near future, Dr. Toilet is not available for purchase in the US.

Projected Image of the Futuristic Dr. Toilet

You can bet you'll be reading more about Dr. Toilet in the future on Sick Tech on Deck. Anything with THAT much of a life changing potential will definitely be in the media sometime soon.