YouTube Going Viral In Europe

In a bid to expand their user base and capitalize on the success of original content in the US, YouTube is expanding into Europe with 60 new channels. The channels will largely be celebrity and personality driven with a couple large exceptions. The BBC and a few other large European Media Conglomerates will get their own channels to help push their own original content. Last year YouTube launched some 100 channels in the US in a successful bid to push their appeal past viral hits which have made the site popular.

YouTube has seen huge gains since the launch of their new channels in the US and advertise something for everyone from parenting and cooking to music, sports and comedy. The push has been a key development for YouTube in attracting greater ad revenue. With the success of the current channels and the likely success of those in Europe, YouTube could continue to deal a larger blow to cable and satellite providers as networks and viewers continue to embrace the digital revolution without them. It is reported that YouTube viewers watched 4 billion hours of original content a month. YouTube has also stated that it wishes to fund content creators in the over 49 nations where YouTube is present.

The company states it wants to move away from low quality user generated viral videos and into more professional content that can build sustained audiences. This is already opening huge doorways for networks like the BBC, FOX, CBS and others. This blog itself has its own YouTube channel! As of writing this we are in the process of developing our first video which will be released this weekend on YouTube and on Geeked Out Future as well so look forward to that. As always, what do you think about this? Feel free to comment, I’m always interested in hearing what my viewers think.

Ch-Ch-Changes!

Due to our ever constant work in keeping a fresh and up-to-date site chock full original content Geeked Out Electronics and Sister sites Geeked Out Politics and Future Shock have combined to bring you all new content, a new layout, and a new name Geeked Out Future. Throughout the week we will be working out the kinks and revamping the site to provide new and original content. we will also be expanding our content to include weekly podcasts and video.  We hope you enjoy and as always go forth and Geek!

Pirate Bay Down But Not Out

Popular torrent site The Pirate Bay is down again. Over the last year the site has suffered numerous attacks in an attempt to shut down the site. Other sites such as Demonoid and MegaUpload suffered similar fates before ultimately being shut down. Will The Pirate Bay suffer a similar fate? Pirate Bay is currently down but promises to be up and running in a week. There have been multiple attempts at thwarting the site in the last year, including a DDoS attack, to no avail. Each time The Pirate Bay bounces back. The site has even dodged legal bullets in its home country of Sweden. The Pirate Bay claims it is currently down due to a power outage, the remains to be seen as torrent geeks and downloaders the world over commence to freaking out.

Over the Summer the Pirate Pay was targeted by a particularly nasty DDoS,  distributed-denial-of-service, attack and was down off and on. The attacks were over June, July and August respectively. According to the hacker group Anonymous the attacks were likely perpetrated by the MPAA, RIAA, or a government agency. On August 8 the Ukranian government blocked the site. So with the most recent attacks it is natural for geeks the world over to suspect the worst. Fortunately, The Pirate Bay's home country of The Netherlands has mostly allowed the torrent server to continue operating. The most recently it is reported the Pirate Bay only suffered a power outage which took the site down. Suck on that RIAA! Torrent freak reports the site will be up and running in a week.

The Next Space Race

Since I was a little boy I've always been fascinated by the Moon. I think it has always been one of my greatest lifes ambition to visit our closest celestial nieghbor. We may be closer today to those dreams than ever before. If anyone believed the predictions of futurists after Neil Armstrong's landing on the Moon, we would all be living on Moon colonies and vacationing in space by 1985. So what happened? Why are we no closer to these goals? After many successful Moon landings, it seems the U.S. kind of gave up. That is all about to change. China already has plans in the works to make their first journey to our closest satellite. Additionally scientists are discussing possibilities of large scale moon bases equipped with telescopes and supercomputers on the Moon. The next generation of space entrepreneurs all seem poised to stake their claims on Earth's Moon.

 China recently unveiled a five-year plan for putting astronauts on the moon, which would make it the first nation to visit since the U.S. last set foot there some 40 years ago. "China will conduct studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing," according to the state council, also calling for deep-space exploration of other planets and asteroids. Though there is no deadline for the launch the announcement is seen as an official declaration of China's lunar goals. China is also building its own prototype space station, the Tiangong 1, before construction of a Mir-class station. It has already mapped the moon with the Chang'e-1 lunar probe, and the Shenzhou-9 docked with Tiangong-1 in June. "Since 2006, Long March rockets have accomplished 67 successful launches, sending 79 spacecraft into planned orbits and demonstrating noteworthy improvement in the reliability of China's launch vehicles." Although the space program is backed by the People's Liberation Army, the government asserts the program is entirely peaceful: "China always adheres to the use of outer space for peaceful purposes, and opposes weaponization or any arms race in outer space."

Forget the U.S. data crunch. NASA admits their is an impending data crunch in space with the amount of data being processed by various satellites, shuttles and space stations the data traffic will become to much to handle. Enter Ouliang Chang, USC graduate student, who has developed a plan to solve this crisis by placing a supercomputer on the Moon to alleviate the coming crunch. The plan is likely to be vastly expensive and would be the most expensive supercomputer ever built. He is not alone, however, many scientists are advocating for an increased scientific presence on the satellite. NASA scientists are advocating placing Telescopes on the Moon. They say the absence of an atmosphere on the moon would allow astronomers to peer deeper into space than currently can be allowed. The base would even have advantage over satellites viewing into space as it would be much easier to repair and upgrade a telescope in a fixed location.

If their is money to be made someone somewhere is likely looking to profit. The Moon is no exception. Helium-3, also called tralphium, is widely sought for use as fuel in fusion generators. Helium-3 is extremely rare on Earth, but guess where it can be found readily? If you guessed the moon, bingo. Helium-3 is said to be three times less corrosive than hydrogen which would enable to fusion generators to run off the fuel three times longer. The possibilities this holds for making fusion energy a viable energy alternative could be huge. The results for those to capitalize off this would also be huge. The burgeoning private space industry could also be positively affected with increased travel to the moon. Already companies like Space X contract space flights to the ISS for the US government but as commercial development on the moon expands it grows the potential for their profit as well. Even James Cameron, Avatar Movie Director, seems ready to jump in, his project Planetary Resources has its sites on mining asteroids and possibly even the moon.

All this is, granted, years away but it seems the ideas are beginning to come together to start a major push for human interests on the moon. It was commercial and government interests that launched European exploration into the new world it will likely be a partnership between science, government and business that will launch our human civilization into the 21st century and begin our human transpermitaztion into space. 

Factory of the Future

 The world is getting smaller. Technology has made our world faster, cheaper more responsive to change and, you guessed it,  smaller. Behold the new face of manufacturing the 3-D printer. Now, the 3-D printer has been around for a while, however, with recent advancements in 3-D printing technology the printer is cheaper and more effective. early models could only form 3-D models of resins and plastics, new models can print metals like steel, silver and even materials like ceramic and wood. In the future every mass produced object from cars to plastic key chains to furniture could be manufactured using 3-D printing technology. Traditional manufacturing used a method of subtractive processing where as materials where taken away i.e. drilling, molding etc,. What makes 3-D printing so exciting is it cheapens the process by using additive processing by where by layer of layer of material is formed to make a three dimensional model. This process removes the need for assembling parts from individual processes. For example an entire car could just merely be printed rather than each individual part be molded and then put together; no parts, no rivets, just one whole piece. Any entrepreneur with just a three dimensional design, and a few thousand bucks, could manufacture a product with little to no help.

This technology is cheap. The average 3-D printer costs about $1500 to $5000. Compare that to the average piece of factory equipment and you can see why the technology is so promising. Literally anything can be made with just a 3-D computer design. In fact recently a gunsmith manufactured an AR-15 with a 3-D printer. This huge leap in scientific advancement has many over-arching repercussions to consider. One being the manufacture of weapons by anyone in the privacy of their own home, Ted Kaczynski 2020? Furthermore, where will these leave the worlds unskilled labor force if manpower is no longer needed due to the ease of production. Businesses are becoming smaller and smaller, like the rest of our world, and with the evolution of business and manufacturing many will have to adapt greatly to overcome. This new technology opens the door for a great many of possiblities both good and bad I think it will be interesting to watch it's development.                                                   

The Coming Mobile Business Revolution

Mobile is changing everything. From the time we wake up, to the time we go to bed we are constantly using our mobile devices. In many ways they have become an extension of ourselves. Not only is this mobile revolution changing the way we live it is changing the way we do business. You can just look at the app market which in the last few years has become a multi-billion dollar business. Furthermore, many businesses, namely those monetizing through advertising, are struggling to stay above water in combating the growing trend. Even companies like Facebook are struggling to define their place in a  growing mobile market.

My day started like most anyone else. My phone's alarm sounded, waking me up to my favorite Bowie song. I quickly jumped out of bed hit my workout app and started today's days routine. Afterwards, I jumped in the shower while listening to my "shower" playlist, mostly motivational gems like "Eye of the Tiger." I got the kids ready and ate, while scrolling through my Twitter and looking for news. We checked the bus schedule through the Columbia Transit site and the kids played an educational app while we waited for the bus. Your day may have started slightly different but with one theme uniting us, our mobile devices have begun to define who we are. Our interests, our work, our day to day activities are all directly reflected through our phones and the apps we use on a daily basis.

This mobile business revolution with its focus on apps has become big money for a great many of businesses, but has shaken up even one time industry leaders and forced them to adapt to survive. Facebook is a major player that has been adversely effected.  The app industry is slated to become a two billion dollar industry in 2012, a hefty feat considering it is only a two year old concept. Many of these apps are raking in money through advertisers fees and paid subscriptions the app gaming company Zynga is slated to be worth $100 million. To put that in perspective it took Google three years to break even and become profitable. Facebook has been one of the largest companies struggling to keep up. Facebook makes the majority of its revenue from ad revenue posting advertisements on it's site. However, Facebook can not effectively advertise on the smaller screen of mobile devices and with a majority of people now accessing their Facebooks from a mobile device this makes a huge problem for the site to remain profitable.

So, how can businesses stay afloat and capitalize on this growing market? Companies need to become mobile. Just like companies in the late 90's and early 2000's moved to websites to stay relevant companies in the 10's need to develop apps or in the least optimize their websites to be mobile browser friendly and optimize to advertise while still being user friendly. Technology is moving at such a fever pace no one is safe from the effects of stagnation if Facebook does not quickly and effectively find a way to capitalize on the growing mobile revolution they may to find themselves in the anal's of history. 

The Next Big Identity Threat

If you're the average person your phone holds your life. Schedules, appointments, reminders, personal pictures, notes, your favorite music, banking information, etc; New features being championed by credit card companies would even turn your phone into a credit card. This has made the cell phone a prime target for hackers and identity thieves alike. Most phones, however, offer little in the way of security make your phone a prime target.

If you're like me you have apps galore. Everything from Facebook and Twitter to Evernote, Pandora and everything in between. Most of us live our lives off our phones. From the alarm that wakes us up in the morning to the playlist that puts us to sleep at night. So much of our identity is stored to our phones and identity thieves want access. With many phones connecting directly to our content with out passwords for easy access, a cell phone in a thief or hacker's hands could be devastating.

What's more cell phone providers, credit card companies, Google and Paypal are rushing to push apps which could potentially give thieves direct access to our bank accounts. MasterCard, Citibank and Google have teamed up to bring you Google Wallet , which works anywhere that accepts MasterCard Paypass and would allow you to swipe your phone just like a Paypass card. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile also have a similar app Isis in the works. These all work on what is called a NFC, near field communication, chip. The technology does seem like a promising development for the future of commerce, however, with few firewalls on phones to prevent catastrophe it may not prove to be viable.

The smart phone killed the phone as we once knew it. When cell phones first become popular most people had it glued to their ears or spent their time frantically texting away. However, with the rise of the data revolution many users spend much more time on the internet on their phones than actually talking to people. In fact most of us spend more time talking to our friends via facebook on our phone than actually directly talking our texting them. Many developers had that in mind and many operating systems are dangerously without protection. Like computers you can buy virus protection for your mobile device but few people actually do. Which leaves the devices open for security breeches. With added security issues mobile developers should evolve to take greater steps to provide security for their customers but if not people need to take security into their own hands. You have been warned.

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