Monday, November 23, 2009

ALL ABOUT ONLINE DEGREES

Online Degree
The Internet evolution has drastically changed the education landscape. What was once considered “Distance Education” is now deemed “Online Education” where the method of teaching and learning has become virtual for students across the world.
Online Degrees are available from a wide variety of internet sources to include accredited Universities to fake Diploma Mills that churn out diplomas without any requirements other than payment.
Receiving an Online Degree provides numerous advantages to education seekers who are restricted by time, resources or transportation but can still advance their career through education.
Advancing Your Career Through Online Education
Online universities and colleges and campus Universities have begun to aggressively pursue students pursuing an education. It is important to take the time to identify which of these institutions are a good fit for you. Some factors to consider include cost, degrees provided, pass/fail requirements (ie, number of exams, theses required to get your degree), attendance, book purchases, and personal attention you may need in order to maximize your education experience. If you are simply “degree shopping” for the quickest and easiest way to get an online degree to put on your resume’, you will probably look for a school that has minimal attendance requirements and is cost effective. However, if learning a skill or trait is critical, then it’s important to look deeper in to the professors, books, itinerary and other online resources that will be available so that you can effectively advance your career after you receive your online diplomas. Regardless of which school you choose, be sure to select a school that is accredited to provide an online degree, such as University of Phoenix or Capella University, as any qualified employer will do research on your internet degree to determine if it’s worth the paper it’s written on.
After you conduct your research on the various online degree colleges and universities, and choose the website that is the best fit for you, prepare yourself to buckle down, read, study and write just as you would for any school. The qualifications to be accepted are generally not as stringent as a campus college such as Penn State University, or University of Florida, but the education is certainly valuable.
There is some debate, however, about how these degrees are viewed by employers. Certainly, having internet or online degrees is better than having no degree at all, but some employers may look down upon them or confuse them with the fake diploma mills that currently exist on the internet. Be prepared in an interview to discuss what you learned in your online education, the challenges you faced and the online coursework you completed that will make you more qualified for your new career.
Vault.com, a career information website, reports that “77 percent of hiring managers say that an online degree received through an established university such as Duke or Stanford is more acceptable than a degree earned through an Internet only university like Capella or Jones International." This is a reality in the online degree landscape, but with aggressive pursuit of the fake diploma industry, online educations will soon become widely accepted and seen as a great way to move you career forward.
How to identify legitimate Internet Degree Colleges and Universities?
Check accreditation of the online degree at US Department of Education
Check legitimacy of the Internet University at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation
Write to the Diploma Mill Police that authenticates Internet Institutes of Education.

Posted by Talha at 2:35 AM | | Comments

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Football : Inflatable Goal Posts

Have you ever dreamed of carrying your own football game with you no matter where you went? How about having easy access to inflatable goal posts by keeping them in a carry bag in your car? Luckily for you, this invention has arrived.

The iGoal is something that spent two years in development, and it shows. It is an inflatable football goal that can be put up anywhere, whether it is on a pitch, an open field, inside a gymnasium, or even on the beach. The best part is that it inflates in seconds. The nets are pre-attached, so there will be no need to attach anything.

It's an especially great invention for kids. That's because there are no hard surfaces. If someone runs into a pole, they're more likely to laugh than be knocked unconscious. Theses inflatable goal posts are safe and durable. They have also been individually tested and passed by BSi.

Another thing you should know about this item is that the people behind creating and marketing it are ex-professional athletes with strong business backgrounds. In addition to that, they're all extremely passionate about their sport. They believe in their product enough that they also offer a one year guarantee.

These portable football goals come in six different sizes and can be used by any age group, from toddlers to professionals to seniors. That's the big selling point about them; there is no possible situation they would not be a fit when it comes to football. They will most likely take over the traditional form of goal posts. Anything that is safer, more durable, and more portable than its predecessor is likely to do that.

Check out the links below for more info.

inflatable goal

inflatable goals

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Posted by dj hanz at 4:23 AM | | Comments

Friday, November 6, 2009

DeRulo Tops Hot 100, But Swift Swoops In With Record-Breaking Debut Sum



Jason DeRulo will become the fourth artist of 2009 to take their first charting single to No. 1 as his "Whatcha Say" will top the Billboard Hot 100 chart to be released tomorrow (Nov. 5). He replaces fellow newbie Owl City, which sees its "Fireflies" fall to No. 2.  Other artists to take their debut single to No. 1 this year were Jay Sean with "Down" (No. 4 this week) and Lady Gaga with "Just Dance." Gaga, meanwhile, holds at No. 6 with "Paparazzi" and has the Hot Shot Debut at No. 9 with "Bad Romance," one of the new tracks from her upcoming album re-release "The Fame Monster." The title opens at No. 3 on Digital Songs with 142,000 downloads.

It is yet another album reissue that leads to the most intriguing Hot 100 happenings however. Taylor Swift, with each of the new tracks on her "Fearless (Platinum Edition)" album, becomes the first artist in the history of the Hot 100 to debut five songs within the top 30 in a single week. "Jump Then Fall" fares the best, opening at No. 10, followed by "Untouchable" (No. 19), "The Other Side of the Door" (No. 22), "Superstar" (No. 27) and "Come In With the Rain" (No. 30). Those tracks join four other Swift singles on the list. "Forever & Always," which appears in a redone version on the "Platinum Edition" album, re-enters at No. 34, joining chart holdovers "You Belong With Me" (No. 14) and "Fifteen" (No. 49). At No. 80, Swift re-enters as a featured artist on Boys Like Girls' "Two Is Better Than One."

Swift's nine chart listings give her the record for most charted titles in a single week by a female artist. Among all artists, the Beatles lead with 14 entries (April 11, 1964).

Back in the top 10, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys jump 13-3 as both the Airplay and Digital Gainer with "Empire State of Mind." The duo performed the song prior to game 2 of the World Series on Fox on Thursday, Oct. 29, leading to a download spike of 62%. Jay-Z's prior single "Run This Town," with Rihanna and Kanye West, dips 5-7.

Miley Cyrus slips 4-5 with "Party In The U.S.A." and Britney Spears regains her bullet, but holds at No. 8 with "3."

Posted by dj hanz at 10:31 AM | | Comments

A State of Trance 429 - Armin Van Buuren [asot 429] (05 November 2009)

Armin Van Buuren - A State of Trance 429 | WeLoveaTrance



Tracklist:

01. Imogen Heap - Canvas (Mark Eteson Re-Paint)
02. Dash Berlin & Emma Hewitt - Waiting (First State Remix)
03. Matt Darey pres. Urban Astronauts - See The Sun (Aurosonic Remix) [Future Favorite]
04. Kyau & Albert - I love you (Cosmic Gate remix)
05. Binari Finary - 2009 (Vegas Baby Remix)
06. Jochen Miller - Red One
07. M.I.K.E. - pres. Plastic Boy - Chocolate Infusion [Tune of the Week]
08. Marco V - When the Night Falls
09. Tritonal Ft. Cristina Soto - Kiss Me Here
10. Solis - Afterglow
11. Temple One - Sahara Nights
12. Sophie Sugar - Together
13. Franz Hlusek & Jorge Nava - Cosmic Dreamer (Fast Distance Mix)
14. Robert Nickson Vs. Adam Nickey - Maybe Next Time
15. Talla 2XLC feat. Skysurfer - Terra Australis (Jorn van Deynhoven Remix)
16. John O’Callaghan feat. Beverly O’Sullivan - Don’t Look Back - in memory of Beverly O’Sullivan :(
17. Armin van Buuren feat. VanVelzen - Broken Tonight (Alex M.O.R.P.H. Remix)
18. Med vs Neil Bamford - Light Up
19. Be:Gold - Sunstroke
20. Solid Globe - Sahara [ASOT Radio Classic]

Posted by dj hanz at 10:20 AM | | Comments

Giz Explains: Android, and How It Will Take Over the World




This week we met Motorola's Droid, the first handset with Android 2.0. To an outsider, it just looks like another Google smartphone, but 2.0 is more than that: it's proof that Android is finally going to take over the world.

So Wait, What Is Android, Exactly?

In Google's words, it's "the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices." That doesn't mean much, so here's a breakdown: It's a Linux-based, open-source mobile OS, complete with a custom window manager, modified Linux 2.6 kernel, WebKit-based browser and built-in camera, calendar, messaging, dialer, calculator, media player and album apps. If that sounds a little sparse, that's because it is: Android on its own doesn't amount to a whole lot; in fact, a phone with plain vanilla Android wouldn't feel like a smartphone at all. Thankfully, these phones don't exist.
Android is Linux insofar as its core components are open-source and free, and Google must publish their source code with every release. But the real heart of the Android phone experience—the Google apps like Maps, GChat, Gmail, Android Market, Google Voice, Places and YouTube are closed-source, meaning Google owns them outright. Every Google phone comes with these apps in one form or another so to the user this distinction isn't that important. That said, it occasionally rears its head, like when Android modder Cyanogen had to strip the apps out of his custom Android builds to avoid getting sued by Google:
The issue that's raised is the redistribution of Google's proprietary applications like Maps, GTalk, Market, and YouTube. They are Google's intellectual property and I intend to respect that. I will no longer be distributing these applications as part of CyanogenMod.
This can lead to more mainstream (and confusing) issues, like with the, erm, touchy (sorry!) multitouch issue: Android OS supports multitouch, in that it can recognize multiple simultaneous input points on its screen. But Google's Android apps don't. So when a company like HTC comes along and decides to properly add multitiouch to the OS, they can only add it to the open-source parts, like the browser (or their own closed-source apps), not Google's proprietary apps. That's why the Hero has pinch-zoom in its browser and photo albums but not in Google Maps, where it's just as at home.
The issue gets even less trivial as the apps grow more central to the Android experience. You know how Google Maps Navigation was, like, the banner feature for Android 2.0? Well,it was, but technically speaking, it's not a part of Android. It's just part of an app made by Google for Android, and that'll ship with most Android handsets. Except for in countries where Google doesn't have their mapping data quite together enough, where it won't. That's what's happening with the Euro Droid, which, by the way, does have multitouch in its browser, like the Hero. That's why the distinction matters.
So, why take so much care to set up and protect this open source component, when surely Google could just slap together a closed-source mobile operating system and give it away for free, right? It would deprive handset manufacturers of their ability to freely modify certain core components of the OS, sure, but the real reasoning, oddly enough, has less to do with phones and more to do with, well, everything else.

How We Got Here

Flash back to November 7th, 2007, when the Open Handset Alliance, a massive coalition of mobile industry companies, held hands to announce to the world their new child. His name was Android, and we were told very little about him. What we were told, though, was delivered almost entirely in frustratingly vague platitudes:
Handset manufacturers and wireless operators will be free to customize Android in order to bring to market innovative new products faster and at a much lower cost. Developers will have complete access to handset capabilities and tools that will enable them to build more compelling and user-friendly services, bringing the Internet developer model to the mobile space.
We were a little disappointed that the GPhone wasn't strictly a phone, but like most people, this sounded exciting to us. Vague, but exciting.
And so we waited, patiently. And waited. Then, nearly a year later, we got our hands on the first hardware to actually use Android. It was called the T-Mobile G1, and It Was Good. Then, six months later, we got another phone—the Magic, or MyTouch, which was more or less exactly like the first one, minus a keyboard. It wasn't until two full years since Android's first appearance—when not just HTC but Motorola, Samsung and Sony started showing off fresh wares—that Android began to feel like more than an experiment. And more important than getting fresh hardware, Android's OS had changed too. A lot.
The T-Mobile G1 shipped with Android 1.0, which wasn't exactly missing much, but still felt a bit barebones. We had to wait until February of 2009 for paid apps to show up in the Android Market, after which April saw the first major update, Android 1.5 "Cupcake." (Updates each have alphabetical, pastry-themed codenames.) This was followed by 1.6 "Donut," which most new handsets are shipping with now, then 2.0 (yes, "Eclair"), which throws in social networking integration, an interface lift, support for new device resolutions, a fresh developer SDK and support for the optional Google Maps Navigation. This version is currently only found on the Motorola Droid, but should start showing up elsewhere with a few months. And so here we are. And that's just half of it.

Android Isn't Just a Phone OS

That announcement I showed you earlier? That was from the Open Handset alliance, a consortium of phone folks—handsets manufacturers, mobile chip makers and the like. But let's look back at another announcement, from the Android project leads, back in early 2008:
Android is not a single piece of hardware; it's a complete, end-to-end software platform that can be adapted to work on any number of hardware configurations. Everything is there, from the bootloader all the way up to the applications...Even if you're not planning to ship a mobile device any time soon, Android has a lot to offer. Interested in working on a speech-recognition library? Looking to do some research on virtual machines? Need an out-of-the-box embedded Linux solution? All of these pieces are available, right now, as part of the Android Open Source Project, along with graphics libraries, media codecs, and some of the best development tools I've ever worked with.
Almost all the talk about Android over the last two years has been about Android the phone OS, not Android the lightweight Linux distribution. While Google was busy pumping out high-profile phone-centric updates, Android was starting to creep into other industries, like a disease. A good disease, that everyone likes! Yes, one of those. This is where things get weird.

Remember all those not-quite-there Android netbooks? Part of the plan. The Android-powered Barnes & Noble Nook? Shouldn't have been a surprise. Android navigators? Why not? PMPs? Creative's got one. Photo frames and set-top boxes? Already in the works.
Most of these devices won't look like Android hardware to us, because our strongest Android associations with the OS are all visual and phone-specific, like the homescreen, app drawer and dialer. Nonetheless, this is as much a part of the Android vision as phones are—it just won't be as obvious.
Your Android-powered DVR won't have an app drawer, but it will share the kernel, and an unusually good widget system. Your Android-powered PMP may run a custom interface, but it'll have access to thousands of apps, like an open-source iPod Touch. Your Android-powered photo frame might look just like any other photo frame, but when it drops your wireless connection, it'll have a decent, full-featured settings screen to help you pick it back up. And over-the-air updates. And it might actually cost a few dollars less that it would have otherwise, because remember, Android is free. This is our Android future, and it sounds awesome.

What Happens Next

But the first step in the Android takeover is necessarily the phones. Android 2.0 means the handsets aren't just interesting anymore; they're truly buyable. As Matt said this week:
In time, Android very well could be the internet phone, hands down, in terms of raw capabilities.... Android 2.0's potential finally feels as enormous as the iPhone's, and I get kinda tingly thinking about it.

What problems the phones still have—among them, poor media playback and the lack of a bundled desktop client to manage media—are not with Android but with Google, which is really just a major supporter of Android. Either Google will solve them hands-on, or the dream of the open source and app developer communities rising up to fill in all the gaps will become a reality. What's certain is that Google—or someone—needs to address them if future legions of Google-branded phones are to succeed to their full potential.
Speaking of potential, it's massive. In addition to everything else Android has going on, timing is on its side. Windows Mobile is limping along with two broken legs, and its hardware partners took (or maybe gave) notice: Motorola, lately a pariah in its own right, doesn't want anything more to do with Microsoft; HTC is stating continued support while quietly phasing out the WinMo ranks; Sony Ericsson, which hasn't seen a true hit come from one of their Microsoft-branded phones in years, is dabbling in Androidery. And as far as most consumers are concerned, anything Windows Mobile can do, Android can do better.
It doesn't stop with Microsoft, either. Symbian, whose boss called Android "just another Linux platform," is losing ground, and losing some of Sony Ericsson's business doesn't help. The Palm Pre, polished and beautiful as it is, can't keep up with Android's exploding app inventory, multiplying hardware partners and rock-star ability to draw talent. RIM's BlackBerry isn't generally seen as a direct Android competitor, but Android 2.0, along with Palm's WebOS and Apple's iPhone OS, are the main reasons the BlackBerry OS feels so clunky and old. That matters. From here, the outlook is clear: Android and the iPhone are the next consumer smartphone superpowers.
And even if it takes Google 10 years to iron out Android's faults and push this kind of adoption, you can expect Android, or its unofficial pseudonym "Google Phone," to become a household name. Besides, Android will start creeping into our lives in places we might not expect it. It'll power our settop boxes, ebook readers, PMPs and who knows what else. It's not just going to be the next great smartphone OS, it'll be the quiet, invisible software layer that sits between all our portable gadgets and our fingers.
Source photo courtesy of NASA

Posted by dj hanz at 10:14 AM | | Comments

Samsung's New Ultra Slim Flash Memory Chips Will Cause Gadget Shrinkage



With a thickness of only 0.6mm, Samsung's newest NAND chips are practically anorexic, but for once that's a good thing. Thinner chips like these could bring smaller gadgets and hopefully also lead to lower SSD prices.
According to Samsung, their new chips are actually the slimmest ever and "40% thinner and lighter than a conventional memory package." Whether those details are true or not, I look forward to seeing them hit the market and start slipping into newer, smaller gadgets.

Posted by dj hanz at 10:11 AM | | Comments