Back to school

Yup! It’s time to get ready for school, even if it’s bad news for my teenage son also on my wallet. Just like every year, we start with a lot of new things. No exception this year.

The Hungarian education system is the same as every other ex-communism countries. A well-known Prussian education system that has been slowly changing to western style system. Well, we  are not quite there yet, but as I see my son’s education at least it looks promising – foreign languages for instance, German and English are the most commonly thought, but you can find schools which are also teaching French and Spanish. Today our schools require at least one foreign language otherwise you have no chance to get to a collage. In my days we were forced to learn Russian and guess what? It's also becoming trendy again.

Talking about new and trendy  - IT became essential, a subject of its own at schools.

But what school can teach a 13 years old boy anything they don’t already know? - Because he’s already an extensive computer user - as  I’m thinking about the enormous amount of time he spends on Facebook or Minecraft, etc it's amazing- I find whenever I try to help him out on the computer it turns out I need the help and not him. So the more he uses it the better expert he becomes... I guess. Does the skills he is learning require some basic programming skills? or it’s simply an ongoing self-development?

Is it possible that he has learned computer languages already? Does the computer have its own language in the first place? Some guys think computers do have languages, because if you don’t give the right command it won’t understand you. And you must communicate with it, right? does that meet the foundation of a language? Wikipedia definition of a language would agree!

Of course there are two sides of the coins. If schools want to give some space and time for the increasing IT subjects something has to be reduced, as well. This case Hungarian grammar becomes the loser.

I just wonder how my boy is going to write an official letter. Abbreviations and emoticons :) ?

Who’s to blame?

 

Future? Unemployment? Pictures? Cloud? How does all this things come together? 

Do you want to find a job? It’s not easy these days. Do you use social network?  Since we post a bunch of pictures of our moments in life and what we want to share with our friends. But how is this activity affecting our future? Can the cloud be blamed for that? Nope. The answer is the users and their bad habits...and of course this requires knowledge of the cloud.

Reckless (Thoughtless) Youth

 Eric E. Schmidt - served as the CEO of Google until 2011 – He drew younger generation’s attention to the danger of posting pictures on Facebook. He warned them not to share too many personal events of themselves. He said –that the older generation made their mistakes, but there mistakes didn’t stay on the internet too long, so it was easy to move on. Teens today might say- who cares? It’s yesterday news now…Well that’s not quite true anymore!

Behind the scenes

To store our pictures on the cloud is fast and simple. It happens in real time and we enjoy this fact. But do we know what happens behind the scenes?

 

 

When you take that picture and posted on your social media site many copies have been made to be available to your friends. So it means your picture landed on many computers any many data warehouses which can be uploaded in anytime. And these computers are all connected together. So it means that your picture gets replicated many different times just to get shared. From that one photo your social sites make many copy to ensure that it gets shared. That’s called the reliability of cloud. As you know, it needs to be reliable.. There when you want it.

Do you feel the danger yet?

Cloud computing used by all devices

I’ve spent too much time on hi-tech devices and I found myself influenced that so many things out there what I willing know. I got excited about this and this made me think that I should dig into deep in real technologies of the future. I’m hunger for new challenges and I’m interested in new things even if it still tough for me…so I've decided to spread my wings and fly..

 

 

Cloud…So it is must be in the air right? Seems to me that my first impression about cloud computing is access to…space..(cloud storage) plenty of space which brings plenty of possibilities which would be great since space is limited here physically. Think about data center, storage, power, networking, service and technical team who these service setting up a data center is expensive. Looking at the providers that provide space we see that capacity, and speed becomes important to making a decision. It’s interesting that the fastest provider, SugarSync is hardly known around the Hungarian market.

 

 

So, what is cloud?  The answer is simple.  Networks both private and public connected to each other that provide a service… is essentially cloud much like what we call services on the internet today. The terms used for cloud computing are important to know such as SaaS is software as a service, Sugarsync provides a SaaS service. Then Platform which is a service..they give you application programing interfaces (API’s) which let you build software on their software. For instance Farmville this software was built as a SaaS (Software as a Service) it is built on the Facebook environment.

So let’s find out more…

What’s the power on using it? Is it secure? How much it cost? Is it reliable? How many application it has??? Who can use it? How would it make you change of think of your business? Or your home?

The new Hungarian Revolution

March 15th represents of the biggest Hungarian anniversaries.  In 1848-49, the Hungarian revolution was followed by the revolutionary war in Europe, however only Hungary was successful at resisting invasion. This day is also special since the famous Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi’s, wrote the Hungarian national anthem from one of his poems. The song rumbles the Hungarian consciousness to this day.

“On your feet, Magyar, the homeland call

The time is here now or never!’

As a proud Hungarian we also have to listen to the doctrine forced upon us from our countries President that our freedom still exist. So our hero’s efforts was not wasted. That’s fine, as we got used to our leaders who provide the voice of our national symbol, and let the politicians interpreted the ideology.  

You know we are a smart nation, and have access to news, through twitter, facebook, and so many other real time news feeds, and we watch in horror how the EU states are not happy with the Hungarian political direction. As an outsiders view point, Hungary is collapsing, much like Greece, and Italy. We were warned by the German government to work and restore ourselves, and think about the next steps to being part of a financial connected world. It’s not hard to picture a future where Hungary is kicked out from the EU. It’s a very confusing time, and as a nation we wonder where are the Heroes of our great nation?

Another confusing dilemma comes to the Hungarian market place is the introduction of the smartphone revolution. A growing number of web services such as Facebook, Twitter, the many music sharing services, Map sites, weather app services, and so many more connected activities have invaded Hungary in force, like a new revolutionary war.. This time the information is invading the hearts and minds of the new generation, they become impossible to avoid. So what direction to move, as none of the manufacturers really care about a small market like Hungary. So let’s look at the current dominant devices on the market.

Use a Google Android phone or Apple iPhone? Is this a national dilemma?  

Selecting a device in Hungary

Right now the iPhone is an expensive premium product, and costs more than an average salary for most. It really pushes itself out of the regular people’s hands.

This leaves the android devices, but which one?  It does not help that our local carriers have not done a good job to teach us about the android line up. All the options. So how can we get into a good smartphone, ensure we have all the options, and spend as little as we can?

Interesting fact that women costumer had a more serious role for the purchase of smartphone success than men. Of course we have! – so stay tuned, as I look at what carriers are doing around Budapest.

So which should I choose? Freedom? Life style? Expensive or cheap? Check out this great chart at http://android-devices.net/