The future is fidgetal Frustration with technology is driving our new scatology

The future is fidgetal Frustration with technology is driving our new scatology

The future is fidgetal

28 December 10 00:54 GMT

"Technology, and the hype that surrounds it, is changing the way we speak. But we dont have to turn into drones, all spouting the latest i-word. Chris Bowlby says its time for the techno-bullied to fight back with their own subversive speak.

With the online Oxford English Dictionary recently re-launched and on the look-out for new language, maybe its time for a counter-revolution.

Can we create a new vocabulary that expresses not marketing mania, but the downside, the frustration, the terrible things we sometimes suspect modern technology is doing to us?

When your cursor makes you a curser, do the necessary words come to mind?

Lets start to talk about the crazily fidgetal, the MisApps, mobile drones and Skypeochondria that afflict us all.

Go to BBC to read the original article.

Posted via email from colby pre-posterous

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The future of human computer interaction is near

The future of human computer interaction is near

Leap, developed by Leap Motion, is a product that creates a virtual 3D space in which you can interarct with your Computer by gestures and hand movements. As small as an iPod it even looks awesome and I am pretty sure this could become mainstream, just as tablet PCs have. I dont want to say much more, the video says way more than a thousand words possibly could. Its supposed to be accurate to 1/100 of a millimeter and is said to be priced at $69.99 with a limited number of devices available for preorder. According to their FAQs, Linux support is "on the agenda". Fingers crossed!

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The Future Profits of AH Gaming Diablo III

The Future Profits of AH Gaming Diablo III

Well folks, it has been announced. Within the Auction House of Diablo III, you will be able to buy and sell items with real world gold. Yup. Greenbacks. Or maybe better said Blizzard Cash.....




A recent blue post on the new series of Diablo games states that.....well, check it out yourself:

Heres a few excerpts that caught my eye:

Can players choose to get cash from currency-based auction house sales, instead of having the proceeds deposited into their Battle.net account?
Yes, as an advanced feature, players will have the option of attaching an account with an approved third-party payment service to their Battle.net account. Once this has been completed, proceeds from the sale of items in the currency-based auction house can be deposited into their third-party payment service account. �Cashing out� would then be handled through the third-party payment service. Note that this process will be subject to applicable fees charged by Blizzard and the third-party payment service. Also, any proceeds from the sale of items in the currency-based auction house that have been deposited into the Battle.net account will not be transferrable to the third-party payment service account. Not all regions will support this advanced feature at launch. Region-specific details, as well as details regarding which third-party payment services will be supported and the fee that Blizzard will charge for the cash-out process, will all be provided at a later date.

Why would I want to pay real money to buy or sell in-game items?

Acquiring items has always been a core part of the Diablo series appeal. With the previous Diablo games, many players have shown a great interest in buying, selling, or exchanging items for their characters using real-world currency, turning to potentially unsafe avenues to accomplish this goal. The currency-based version of the auction house provides players with an easy-to-use, Blizzard-sanctioned way to collect money for items obtained while playing Diablo III. In addition, it helps protect players from scams and disreputable third-party sites by providing a secure, in-game method to search for and purchase items posted by other players that are a perfect fit for their character and play style. 
The currency-based auction house is completely optional. Players who arent interested in paying real money for items will still be able to rely on items they acquire through their own adventures, and theyll also be able to trade with friends and use the full-featured gold-based auction house.

What�s Blizzard�s cut?

As with other online auction sites and real-world auction houses, our fee structure will vary by region. However, we plan to collect a nominal fixed transaction fee for each item listed in the auction house. This fee consists of a fixed charge to list the item, which is assessed whether or not the item is successfully sold, and an additional fixed charge that is assessed only if the item is sold. The listing portion of the fee, which helps encourage sensible listing prices and discourage the mass posting of items that are very low quality or would be of little interest to other players, will be waived for a limited number of transactions per account. For players who opt to have the proceeds of their auction house sales go to their third-party payment service account instead of to their Battle.net account, Blizzard will collect a separate �cash-out� fee. Specific details regarding these fees will be announced at a later date.

Can we buy gold from the currency-based auction house?

Players will be able to buy and sell gold through the currency-based auction house at whatever the current market price is, as established by the player community.


To read more on this, chickity check it out yourself: Diablo III- Auction House FAQs.

Is this gonna kill the game before it has a chance to thrive? Are folks going to be camping the AH worse than in WoW? Or even more importantly, are you going to have to search out 500 Diablo "gold" blogs?

Or is it the death of blogs? No more WoW posts, Diablo III posts incoming?

Hmmm.....China prisons are gonna get pretty busy....along with every other gamer looking to make a few extra bucks.

What do yall think?

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The Future of Tracfone in 2016

The Future of Tracfone in 2016

What to Expect in 2016 with Tracfone and a Look Back at 2015

What does the Future hold for Tracfone in 2016?

2016 is upon us and its time to share our thoughts on what to expect from Tracfone in the new year. We will cover what direction we think Tracfone is moving, any changes to the products and services they offer, and some things we hope they will do in the next 12 months.

While TracfoneReviewer is not associated or affiliated with Tracfone in any way, we carefully follow and try to stay up to date on everything going on with Tracfone so that we can share it with our readers and followers on the blog. Below we will give some general opinions and thoughts on what to expect from Tracfone in 2016, but remember that these are just educated guesses based on our experiences. Please share your thoughts and expectations in the comments at the end of this post.

Before we jump into 2016, lets review what Tracfone did in 2015, as it has been a year full with new phones, progression and expansion in service from Tracfone, and various other changes.

Tracfone Year in Review - 2015

While plenty has happened with Tracfone in 2015 we want to highlight three particular changes that were greeted with excitement and enthusiasm from consumers. The Three changes were airtime cards for smartphones, expansion of the BYOP program, and new smartphones available from Tracfone.

Data-Only and Text-Only Airtime Cards for Smartphones
When smartphones came to Tracfone in 2013, the airtime added to these phones was changed to split into three categories - Talk, Text and Data. What this meant was that if you ran out of one category, like text messages, you would have to buy more airtime for all three, even if you only need more texts!

A lot of Tracfone users were annoyed that they had an abundance of one or two categories, but were always running low on another category. Thus, when Tracfone released Data-Only Airtime cards and eventually Text-Only cards, many users were very happy to see them.

You can take a look at our post on the Tracfone Data Cards and Text Cards to learn more about them, and if they are a good deal.

Tracfone also released smartphone-only airtime cards that give you specific amounts of Talk time, Texts and Data and do no triple. We Analyzed the New Tracfone Smartphone Airtime Cards and offered our opinion on what ones are the best deal.

4G LTE BYOP for both GSM and CDMA
4G LTE coverage with Tracfone BYOP was probably the most exciting advance Tracfone made in 2015. They opened the door to a host of much more advanced smartphones that could be used with their service and many users took advantage of this and upgraded. Now you can bring an iPhone 6 or a Samsung Galaxy S6 to use with either GSM or CDMA cell service through Tracfones prepaid service.

LG Sunset with 4G LTE Service
For all of 2014 Tracfone only offered 3G CDMA smartphones for sale and many consumers who didnt have good CDMA coverage were frustrate that they couldnt upgrade to a smartphone. But in 2015 Tracfone released the LG Sunset, which was the second Android phone from Tracfone that uses GSM coverage, and the first with 4G LTE service.

We hope the Sunset will be the first of many more advanced 4G phones coming to Tracfone.

Now that weve looked back at the year, time to see whats in store with Tracfone for 2016!

What to Expect from Tracfone in 2016

We believe Tracfone will move in two primary directions for 2016; release more low-end smartphones and continue to promote the BYOP program.

Already we have seen significant advertising and promotions for bringing your own phone to Tracfone. They have done a lot to improve the process, including webpages dedicated to checking your phones compatibility and activating the device. Tracfone has also released a number of smartphone-only airtime cards, that can be used with either BYOP devices or Tracfone smartphones.

It would appear that Tracfone has found a successful niche for themselves in providing pay-as-you-go service to consumers who dont want contracts or dont need unlimited service. The major carriers like Verizon and AT&T dont really compete with Tracfone because they target very different segments of the cell phone market (heavy users vs light users).

Tracfone has the opportunity to release their own smartphones and we hope they will continue to advance and catch up with the kind of phones you can use on the BYOP program. However, Tracfone will likely only offer devices in the $100-200 range that are a few years old. If consumers want a high-end phone to use with Tracfone, they will have to bring their own.

We do expect Tracfone to continue offering non-smartphones, but dont expect they will be offering any new or updated devices. They released very few, if any, non-android phones in 2015, and that Trend will probably continue. You can still buy plenty of dumb phones from Tracfone, so dont worry about that disappearing anytime soon, it is a strong part of their profitability.

One of the weaknesses that Tracfone faces and needs to fix in 2016 is their somewhat complicated airtime structure. For new users, it can be confusing to know what which airtime is best for them to purchase, and exactly how it will be added to their phone. Right now, Tracfone offers both regular airtime cards that triple when added to a smartphone, and also smartphone-only cards that dont triple. There are airtime plans that give you minutes and 30 days of service every month, and there are auto-renewal options that automatically add a new 90 day airtime card to your phone every 3 months. We will have to wait and see if any changes come, but it is a small barrier for new customers.

Finally, we would recommend our readers continue in the direction that best suits them. So if you prefer the features and speed that a higher-end smartphone can give, then buy your own phone on Amazon, eBay or other retailers and bring it to use with Tracfone. You will have a great device and only be paying a small amount each month for service.

If you prefer a more simple device and less hassle in activating it, then go with a Tracfone branded phone. These wont be disappearing anytime soon.

We also suggest looking into some of the value plans Tracfone offers, or at buying the 1 Year/ 400 Minute Airtime card because these are some of the better deals offered by Tracfone and will help save you money if youre currently buying a 60 Minute Card every 3 months or so.

Tracfone looks like they are growing and pushing their BYOP program and we think they will continue in 2016 as the leaders of pay-as-you-go service.

We hope this post was help and gives you some perspective and ideas on where Tracfone may be heading in the coming months. Please leave a comment below with any questions or thoughts from this post.

If you are still looking for gift ideas, or have a gift card to spend, take a look at our Top 10 List of Tracfone Gift Ideas which includes many fun ideas for Tracfone users.

Thanks for vising and for another great year here at TracfoneReviewer. Happy New Year!

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The future of computing as I would like to see it

The future of computing as I would like to see it

This diagram represents how I see the future of computing.

First we have an online service where we store our data. This would hold our e-mail, pictures, documents, videos, music, etc.

We access our data through web applications. Take Google Docs for example. Currently Google hosts both the application and the data. I would like to see that come to an end. In my model I would log into my Google Docs and set up an account. I would give Google Docs the URL of my web storage server and then Google Docs would give me a unique private key. I would simply highlight this key and copy it into my computers memory. I would then log into my web storage site and select that I want to share my document data. I would paste the private key provided by Google Docs into my storage interface and receive a unique private key from the storage server. I would provide this unique private key back to Google as authorization.

Behind the scenes Google would contact the web storage server, tell them whos account it wants to access, give it both its own private key that is unique to my Google Docs account, and provide the private key that is unique to the storage server. With both of these keys the web storage server can be confident that it is talking to the correct server that I have authorized to access my documents.

With the trust between the two servers setup I could use Google Docs to modify my documents.

I could repeat this process for different online applications. Files would be saved with open standards so that I can be guaranteed that any application on the web can reliably read and write to them.

I could even use two providers for the same service. I could switch back and forth between using Googles picasaweb and Flickr, for example. There is no reason why only one application would need to be tied to a file type.

If down the road Microsoft comes out with a better online application for modifying documents I could go in to my storage service and deny Google access and go through the process of allowing Microsoft. At any point I could ditch Microsoft and go with another service provider.

Likewise, if I want to change my storage provider I should be able to import all my data to a local file and then upload it to a new provider.

Both the web applications and the data should always be synched up to our primary computers. This way if we dont have an internet connection we can still use the application to modify our data, and the next time the computer comes online it will all synch back up. Googles Gears application already allows for application and data synchronization for offline use, and thats exactly how I envision this working.

The benefits to this are:

1. No vendor lock-in.
   We are free to change providers at any time. It is not like currently where one must choose Microsoft Office because it is the only application suite that can reliably open and close the .doc format which is the document format.
2. Access to data from anywhere with an Internet connection.
   You no longer have to carry around a thumb drive or go through any such hassle. Your data is available from almost anywhere.
3. Enhanced data persistence
   Computer crashes will no longer cause you to lose any of your work.
4. Enhanced data security.
   A lot is made of the security problems of data existing on the cloud. I believe that you are better served with your data in the hands of a team of professionals than in yours. The average PC user is simply the largest security hole that exists today. As long as the average user is in charge of their data, the average users data is vulnerable. Google is more likely to keep your data secure than you are.
5. OS independence.
   Whether you are using Windows, Mac, Linux, your cell phone, game console or any other device, all you need is an Internet connection and a browser to get to your content.
6. Cheaper computers.
   Because most of the hard work is being done by the application server, your computer no longer needs a lot of ram and processing to run your applications. You just need enough resources to run your web browser.

This is cloud computing at its best and I believe that we will be seeing technology continue to move in this direction over the coming years. The development of Googles Chrome OS will be the first of many major steps towards this model.

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The Future of PSP Games

The Future of PSP Games

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The Future of Games

The Future of Games

If you have the 30 minutes to spare, Jesse Schells recent talk at DICE 2010, is quite a cage-rattler. The financial strategies that underpin many of todays games may be surprising, but there is no arguing the fact that todays games captivate an audience hungry for social play.

In Design Outside the Box Jesse paints a future where point systems and emerging technologies form the scaffolding for an economy that is dependent upon gameplay.



Knowing such a world may be on the way: What role should gaming play in education?

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The Future of Data Mining Fast Data

The Future of Data Mining Fast Data

Firstly, here are sum statistics from the article I read for this particular blog post:

• Every minute:
• 48 HOURS of video are uploaded on Youtube
• 204 million e-mails are sent
• 600 new websites pop up
• 600,000 pieces of content are shared on Facebook
• Upwards of 100,000 tweets are sent

This article stresses the idea that data mining is time. Author Alissa Lorentz states that we must be able to mine data as quickly as we produce it. Because the of the plethora of electronic information available today, data mining is extremely important and an issue or concept of which I was previously not aware. Lorentz discusses the difference between smart data, data that provides insight to large data sets and big data, which is a term we apply to extremely large data sets. She then elaborates on a concept she calls "fast data." Fast data will eventually be extremely useful. It analyzes data sets in real time. If one were able to analyze all of the data available on a specific company in any given day in a meaningful way, lets just say Id be looking at the stock market.

In class, we have discussed mainly archiving data, organizing data in a historical sense. This article discusses a different concept: streaming data i.e. streaming data live rather than storing it for future use. To me, this is ideal. Rather than storing messages on Facebook, providing users with a list compiled of a certain amount of friends that have recently been in contact on the social network would save memory and computing powers as well as be more useful to the user who has messages from conversations years ago. Also, in applying this concept to other situations, Lorentz talks about how streaming data would provide important information on traffic or public health issues such as flu outbreaks. With the abundance of information that is constantly being added to the web, storing and archiving this information will undoubtedly become obsolete. Instead of focusing on analyzing past data, after reading this article, I think the best direction in the data mining world would be to chase the data rather than store it. Updating data sets in real time would not only eliminate the need for large storage systems, but it would better indicate the trends occurring in the here and now. 














Link to article:
http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/04/big-data-fast-data-smart-data/

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The Past is to be respected and acknowledged but not to be worshiped It is our future in which we will find our greatness

The Past is to be respected and acknowledged but not to be worshiped It is our future in which we will find our greatness

The Past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshiped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
- Pierre Trudeau

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The Flashless Future

The Flashless Future

Adobe Flash

Those two words have driven fear, annoyance and hate into the hearts of many users and developers for some time now. I am here to say today, in case you had not noticed, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I say with certainty that the days Adobe Flash enjoys as a dominant web development tool are numbered.

Dont believe me? Just take a look at the many popular flash based services that are moving away from the stale technology. Two such examples of this are the music streaming service Pandora (which is now fully HTML5) and the popular video streaming site Youtube (which currently offers a beta HTML5 version). Google+ also display any linked to Youtube videos using the HTML5 technology.

It isnt just websites that are predicting the end of flash though. Microsoft recently announced that its new version of Internet Explorer for Windows 8 on ARM will not support plugins of any sort. In fact they went so far to state the obvious:

Java script and HTML5 technologies are the way of the future for web design.

While FOSS advocates such as myself have felt this way for some time it was wonderful to hear it come from the king of closed source software.

Finally, the last sign that flash will soon be a thing of the past is Adobes own "Edge Technology". Edge is designed to help web developers create web content using only Java Script, HTML5 and CSS3. When even the creator of flash realizes their  technology is on the way out I hope everyone else does as well.

~Jeff Hoogland

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The future of computing The SpiNNaker million processor computer

The future of computing The SpiNNaker million processor computer

The future of computing is a very big claim. However if anything the future of computing does not lie in a common time, unified shared memory system - this pretty well describes every multicore computer made at the moment. The trouble is once you go to more than a few thousand cores the shared memory - shared time concept falls to bits. It just doesnt scale. Where then should we look for a new model other than biology? The brains of living creatures are capable of phenomenal processing power and yet have almost none of the features of the computers we build today. Dont you find this odd?

Lets look at how brains do it:

• Does each neuron have a sense of the passage of time? Not in the traditional sense and maybe not at all. If it does it will probably only be only vague ordering.

• Does a neuron share a memory space with every other neuron? No. The closest concept is an area effect of diffusion of chemicals which affect neighbours (which may not be synaptically connected) but that is very far from a shared memory concept.

• Is each neuron connected to every other neuron? They have many connections to close neurons and some connections to neurons further away best described by a statistical distribution but otherwise, again, no.

So clearly modern computing bears as relation to a brain as sudoku does to quantum mechanics. The closest we get are the datacenters of a company such as Google but they enjoy far too much connectivity to be a good model.

Enter the world of academia because no commercial company would be stupid enough to commit the resources we can into a project like this (and all the ones before it which make it possible) - it is unlike anything that has come before and it is risky (i.e. it may not work!).

Project SpiNNaker

This revolutionary idea is nothing less than a plan to put together a computer of approximately 1 million cores with no common clock or shared memory and which can route messages with a model that approximates a neurological system.

Born in the University of Manchesters Advanced Processor Technologies Group the SpiNNaker project has taken shape in collaboration with the University of Southamptons School of Electronics and Computer Science (where I work), the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council and two enlightened commercial companies: ARM (for the processor IP) and Sil�stix (for their Network on Chip expertise).

SpiNNaker is a child of many parents, each a vital step on the path to its genesis:

1. AsipIDE GALS Design and Co-Simulation Framework - A hardware/software co-design and debugging framwork
2. Transactional Memory - A new locking strategy which massively simplifies the ability to lock data to pass information between processes
3. TERAFLUX: Exploiting Dataflow Parallelism in Teradevice Computing - A pan-european project looking at computers with massive numbers of cores
4. The Balsa Asynchronous Synthesis System - A language and compiler targetting asynchronous, handshake driven logic design
   

The main centrepiece of the SpiNNaker project is a special System on Chip, the SpiNNaker SoC. Inside are 18 processors asynchronously connected via a blindingly fast network-on-chip and communicating with the other SoCs via hundreds of megabit links to the other SpiNNaker SoCs. With these SoCs it will take only 56,000 chips to reach the target of 1 million. The cores are ARM968 series processors capable of significant independent computation while communicating with their neighbours or the 1GBbit DDR SDRAM available to each SoC. Even within a SoC the cores do not share a common clock and communicate by passing messages which are routed to each other or outside to another SpiNNaker SoC.

A seriously ambitious project you say? Absolutely right. Vapourware or a dream? Hell no! Feast your eyes on this:

This is the first generation of SpiNNaker SoCs on a test board - there are four dual processor SoCs on this board each next to its accompanying 1Gbit ram chip (click on the picture for a very high resolution version). This board already holds 8 processors asynchronously interconnected with all the necessary debug hardware to perfect the design of the next generation.

Who ever said British Science was dull?

BIG DISCLAIMER: I am not one of the great minds trying to change the world with this project. At best I have helped a couple of people around the edges. I am a very big fan, however!

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The Future Is AWESOME!

The Future Is AWESOME!

Like everyone else on the planet, this is what I currently get when I try to get a little hot single-player Diablo 3 action in.

The reason that this bothers me so much is that this sort of thing is bad for PC/Mac gaming. Its not bad for Blizzard. Theyll still make a mint. But this sort of thing tarnishes the entire platform. Every gamer who gets hit with this sort of thing has a chance of being pushed away from the PC (and with good reason!) and toward consoles and iOS, platforms that dont have these hassles.

My business will, in a small way, get tarred with this brush, and it hurts my bottom line. Which makes me sad.

Oh well. I guess Ill spend time with my family instead. Sigh. If I wanted to spend more time with my family, you think I would have bought Diablo III?

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The Future with HP ProLiant Gen8

The Future with HP ProLiant Gen8

For decades, IT equipment has been getting faster, smaller and cheaper.

In the cloud era, its time that it also got smarter.

After two years of research and hundreds of millions in R&D investment, HP is poised to reveal its next initiative, Project Voyager, which aims to redefine the economics and expectations of IT operations in the cloud era.

While we cant share just yet what our engineers created, we ask that you join us at:

The Future with HP ProLiant Gen8

Date: 4th April 2012 (Wednesday) 

Time: 8:30am - 2:00pm 

Venue: Grand Ballroom, Hilton KL (KL Sentral) 

http://info.hp.com/w/webView?cid=18699171064&mid=1046447866&pid=1666042&vid=13597&ee=ZmFpemFyQHNhbGFtLnVpdG0uZWR1Lm15&si=&mv=H&bv=H&oc=N&sc=&k=_NuRw 

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The Future of Cloud

The Future of Cloud

Bold predictions on the future cloud - notes from The Future X Network: A Bell Labs Perspective

Big picture

The cloud era started with salesforce.com (1999) and AWS (2006).

The first cloud was built on a regionally centralized cloud, with data centers in key regions (North and South America, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific)

Centralization of cloud enables economies of scale but is ill-suited to support latency and bandwidth requirements of certain applications.

We need a new "global-local cloud" that will provide �local delivery� while maintaining global reach.

This trend is already underway with content delivery networks (CDN).

The new global-local cloud  will allow optimal placement of applications by considering the needs of the services. The global-local cloud will be a self-learning, automated and self-optimizing digital fabric for the new era.

Latency

Latency is a major issue for content delivery. This is a direct result of the limitations imposed by TCP. 

Maximum throughput (bits/second) = TCP Window Size (bits)/ round-trip latency (seconds).

With a typical TCP window size of 64 kbytes, and round trip time of 100 ms, the TCP throughput is clamped at 5 Mb/s. The throughput requirements for a 1080p stream and 4K are 6 Mb/s and 15 Mb/s respectively.

If latency is reduced to 20ms, the throughput  can be improved to 25Mb/s. CDN networks have responded to these facts by providing distributed architecture.

Akamai, a CDN network, operates 170,000 caches in 1300 public and private networks in 102 countries.

Large content providers have started to establish commercial agreements directly with local and regional network operators. Bell Labs consulting predicts that an increasing number of global providers will leverage the proximity of the local service providers. It is estimated that by 2025, 60% of cloud servers will be located in edge locations.

Dynamic Scalability

The virality of the social media has led to dynamic popularity of certain content. The "Budweiser Puppy Love" commercial spread on social media and received 13 million views on just the first day. 

Cloud services must be able to handle this highly dynamic traffic profile, which requires advanced monitoring, automation and orchestration. SDN solutions will enable creation of fully dynamic data centers. The tools and technologies needed to build this new cloud are still beginning to emerge.

Future

By 2020, the cloud will transform into a true hybrid of global and local resources. The localization of the cloud will be driven by two factors. First, the explosion of the unicast streaming video. Second, emergence of hyper-local, high-performance and low-latency enterprise applications.

According to Nielsen, traditional TV viewing is gradually declining while unicast streaming services like Netflix is increasing. The network architecture needs to shift focus from broadcast delivery of content to on-demand unicast delivery.

There is a also a new need of doing the local processing of high-bandwidth streams for video analytics. Real-time analytics requires sending many unicast streams across the network but in the opposite direction from the streaming video delivery for entertainment. Localization of the cloud resources at the edge of the network allows processing to be located near clusters of devices, reducing network traffic while maintaining the benefits of centralized analytics.

The global-local cloud can decrease the latency to single digit millisecond range enabling new class of applications that require tight feedback control loops. One such application is permitting humans to interact with virtual objects rendered in the cloud as if they are physically co-located. Today such capabilities are only possible through the use of significant intelligence in the endpoint devices.

Both virtual machines and containers will address different virtualization needs and will continue to play an important role in the local edge clouds and data centers.

Intelligent automation and orchestration based on the past and present traffic patterns would be an important factor in the new clouds.

The networking in the cloud will be enabled by software defined networking (SDN). Typically, a network service is comprised of multiple functions known as a service chain. In the global-local cloud, functions in a service chain may be distributed across the cloud. 

The new business model

The global-local cloud will provide low-latency services with global accessibility to users regardless of their location. There will be global service providers (GSPs) and local service providers (LSPs). The relationship between GSPs and LSPs may follow one of the four following models:

• LSPs provide infrastructure for GSPs
• LSPs provide hosted as-a-service function to global cloud services
• GSPs provide local infrastructure
• LSPs provide global services

By 2020, it is likely that we will see a mix of all of these scenarios. However, GSPs will be of limited number (say 10) because of the cost involved in building a global infrastructure.

By 2020, majority of services must globalize their reach but localize the delivery to be acceptable for a highly mobile consumer base. For high-performance and mission-critical services, local delivery will become essential. The end result of this revolution will be a creation of an eco-system in which a handful of major global-local service providers leverage the resources and services of 100s of local-regional service providers.

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The Future of Tracfone in 2017

The Future of Tracfone in 2017

What to Expect from Tracfone in 2017 and a Look Back at 2016

Welcome to TracfoneReviewer, a blog all about Tracfone Wireless. We share news, reviews and lots of information so take a look around if you are new!

Future of Tracfone in 2017

A lot can happen in a year, and yet the time sometimes seems to go so quickly. Each year we share some of our expectations of what Tracfone will do, or should do in 2017, plus a review of the major advances in 2016. (you can see if we were accurate in our predictions for 2016 in last years post)

Tracfone has been busy in 2016 and they have released a lot of new phones, and made some changes. We will start by quickly reviewing the key points from last year.

While this website (TracfoneReviewer) is not affiliated in any way with Tracfone Wireless, we are passionate about discovering and collecting the latest information and sharing it with our readers. And so based on that, we want to share some of our expectations of the future with you now.

Tracfones Key Highlights from 2016

Here are the highlights of what occurred with Tracfone in 2016 in no particular order. Follow the links to learn more.

• Tracfone Releases iPhone 5S (available form Target)
• iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Released on Tracfones website
• Smartphone Only Airtime Cards were Changed, and Price for Text and Data only cards was Reduced.
• Many new Budget Smartphones were Released by Tracfone such as the Samsung Galaxy Luna, LG Rebel and Samsung Galaxy Core Prime.
• Several smartphones with 16 GB memory for under $200 were released including the Samsung Galaxy Sky, ZTE ZMAX 2 and ZTE Max Duo
• Tracfone BYOP program continued to grow and expand
• Tracfone Stores Open in Five Locations in the US

There were plenty of other interesting developments over the last year, but now we want to transition to what we expect from the coming year.

What to Expect from Tracfone in 2017

Tracfone continues to embrace releasing smartphones to use with their prepaid service, and allowing consumers to bring their own device to the BYOP program.

Budget Smartphones from Tracfone

We expect Tracfone to continue to release a wide variety of smartphones in the $100-$200 range. Phones in this price range usually compromise in certain areas, but still offer great value. Tracfone already released a few smartphones with 16 GB internal memory towards the end of 2016, and we expect this trend to continue.

With many of Tracfones budget smartphones, users will likely notice the phone slowing down a little over time, and generally starting to not be able to keep up with the latest apps. This is to be expected since the phones dont usually have the latest internal specs, and the best solution is to upgrade your phone every couple of years. With some of the airtime bundles, you can get a new smartphone for just a few dollars above the cost of the airtime.

High End Apple and Android Smartphones

Tracfone released several high end smartphones in 2016 including the Samsung Galaxy S5, S6 and S7. They also released several Apple iPhones. We expect Tracfone to continue to offer certain high end phones such as the Nexus 6P, iPhone 7 and more. They do come at a high price, and for many, buying an unlocked device to use with the BYOP program is much more economical.

Tracfone BYOP Expansion

The Bring Your Own Phone program has grown steadily from its rocky start a few years ago. There are still issues that exist, and plenty of our readers have faced various challenges when trying to activate a device, but overall, the process for activating a phone on the BYOP program has become much faster and smoother. Most unlocked CDMA or GSM phones are compatible, and even certain locked phones have worked. As always, try to check the ESN/IMEI of the phone with Tracfone before you buy, although this isnt always possible.

Better Customer Service

Tracfone is not known for their customer service, and if you have been a customer for very long, you know it can sometimes be very challenging getting problems fixed. However, Tracfone has been slowly making improvements to their customer service, and we expect them to continue to improve.

Already we have seen five Tracfone stores show up, where customers can come in and get help in person, and it would be nice to see more of these open up.

If someone from Tracfone happens to read this, then we also want to share a few things we want Tracfone to do in 2017.

What we Want from Tracfone in 2017

We want Tracfone to improve both their customer service and their budget smartphone options.

While we expect them to make improvements in both areas, we also want them to make improvements. Customer service is one of the biggest issues consumers have with Tracfone, and we want them to take it seriously and make changes that will make customers happy! One of the problems with their customer service is the outsourced telephone services which make it hard for many to understand.

With more and more inexpensive cell phone plans becoming available, consumers will choose the one that is easiest for them to use.

For budget smartphones, we want Tracfone to release options that feature up to 32 GB memory, 2 GB RAM and a reasonable camera. There are growing unlocked options available, such as the Moto G4 Play, and we hope Tracfone will secure phones along these lines and sell them for under $200.

That concludes our expectations for Tracfone in 2017. We hope you found this insightful about what might be coming in the near future.

Be sure to share your own expectations or what you want Tracfone to do/change in 2017 in the comments below.

Take a look at our List of Tracfone Promo Codes for January 2017 if you are adding airtime to your phone and want to get some extra minutes for free.

If youre new to Tracfone, our Beginners Guide is a great place to start.

Thanks for visiting and Happy New Year!

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