Google's Updates

So, with an influx of new features coming from Google as a result of the Google I/O conference  I thought that I'd compile a list of all the new features being offered.

• Google Play Music: New interface with a new section called "Listen Now". Basically, Play Music determines which songs you'll probably be most inclined to listen to and puts these albums in this section.
• Google Play Music now offers an option to listen to any song you want, much in the style of Spotify, for a monthly fee of $9.99, or $7.99 if you subscribe before June 30.
• New Google Maps with more personalized maps.
• Google+ had a huge layout redesign.
• Google is working on consolidating all their chat clients into one: Hangout.
• Google+ Photo Tools: Added many more utilities for photos in Google+, most noticeably having the ability to show the better, higher quality photos above the blurry, over/under exposed images. Auto enhance tools include brightness and skin tone corrector  And perhaps one of the most fun tools is the "Auto-awesome" which creates a moving GIF out of your photos.
• Google Now, the personal information assistant for Android has been improved.
• Integration of Google+ comments and Blogger comments.

As I find out about more I'll add them on or let me know if I missed any.

So what do you all think about these updates? Are there some you're really looking forward to? Ones that you don't like? Let me know in the comments.

Topics to Discuss

     Hello everybody. So I know that I haven't used this in a while, but I really would. If anybody has any interesting topics they'd want to hear me discuss or research, just leave a comment to let me know.

-Dominik

Presidency

     Everyone looks over Mitt Romney or Barack Obama like they're some type of god or devil, but the president has very little power over the country. Congress has the most power, so when you vote, make sure to be picky on choosing your congress person. Just a friendly reminder!

The Creative Commons Paradigm

     Some of my readers may have noticed there is something which says "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License". So what does this mean? This means that whatever I say on this blog can be used anywhere, without my permission. My work is not licensed under anything else.

     So how does this vary from normal pieces of work. Let's take music as an example. If I wrote a song and licensed it under a typical copyright, that would mean that no one would be allowed to acquired it without my permission (legally). I wouldn't let you have it unless you payed for it. And you would most likely never be allowed to perform it yourself at a professional venue.

     If I licensed it under a creative commons license, anyone would be allowed to acquire, change, or perform my piece of work without my permission. This seems to be much better for all of my listeners, but what about me? I would have no income from this piece of work, besides me performing it.

     Unfortunately, the only way for this licensed to help everyone, involves a whole paradigm change of the general people.  Some of the dominating corporations in the United States (and the entire world at that matter) is the music and movie industry. People write songs and then they want to make money off of it. They get a record deal, and the music corporation sells millions of copies of the song. But is it fair, that one person can write a song and make tons of money off of it. The question that most artists are asking about creative commons is, "How can I make money from it?" but the question should be, "What else can I do to make money?". In my personal opinion people in the arts should not be making large sums of money.

     People who do much more important jobs, such as scientists and engineers, are paid very little for the amount of work they do compared to artists. This has to be stopped. The world needs to stop letting the art industry run them into a intellectual hole.

     How do we go about detaching ourselves from the art industry? Many people have already engaged in the act of pirating music, but I disagree with this process. We should instead start creating our own works and only license it under creative commons. As these free, legal arts become popular, corporations would start to lose traffic until eventually be forced in bankruptcy.

     Could we get enough people to boycott corporate arts? Yes. Would it be easy? Not at all. But we could do it. And it would be amazing.

A Goal a Day

     With school ending, I realized that I will have no motivation to do anything over the course of the summer besides my trigonometry and history classes (which do take up a large amount of time). And not doing anything annoys me. I am addicted to urgency. I always have to be doing something to be happy; unlike normal people I need to have a upcoming deadline coming at me with alarming speed. Yes, I know  that probably isn't good for me, but it's just the way I am.

     So ten weeks of doing nothing will be my death. To solve this problem, I have come up with a plan. Everyday I will choose a random goal to complete. These goals may range from small to large. It may be completely cleaning my house to learning a new skill. I might even learn a new language. Just something to keep me going nonstop.

     Yes, I know this is not what people may think a "relaxing" summer would be, but I really don't care. If you want to be crazy like me, then please join in and let me know how it goes! I would love to see people as insane as me keeping themselves busy.

     So until next time...

          -Domink

Saying Goodbye

     It's never easy.  Very soon some of my best friends will be leaving my life. Gone. I will never see them again. Sure, there's Facebook and other social networks, but as I move further away from those platforms, people will become more distant too. These amazing group of people, who changed my life, are just going to disappear. And I'm going to miss them.

     Of course, I will never let this make me depressed. In fact, I enjoy this. I enjoy letting these amazing people come into my life and improving it. I build off of their knowledge. I let these people change me. And I am grateful for that.

     I know that right about now you're saying, "Get to the point!". Well my point is this, sometimes in life people will be better and more talented than you at something. Some people might hate that. Some people might hate this person for as long as they live. But to truly become good at something, you have to work with more talented people than you. So my point is that you have to let people be better than you. You have to learn from them.

     Class of 2012, even though I didn't know most of you, I will miss you.

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog, or my personal ranting place where anybody can listen in. I figure I'm just going to talk about stuff that comes to mind, but if anybody wants me to discuss anything in particular then feel free to drop me a line.

     -Dominik