Innovation: Venmo

 The innovation I have decided to write about is the app Venmo. For those of you who do not know, Venmo is a money transfer application that is owned by PayPal. It allows people to send over money or request money via mobile phones. It was founded in 2009 with the headquarters location in New York and has been extremely popular and helpful. 

Diffusion Theory of Innovations: As stated by Wikipedia, this theory "seek's to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, popularized the theory in his book Diffusion of Innovations."

When it was 2009, I was only ten years old, so I did not even have a bank account at that age to sign up with Venmo. However, it did become a massive success because the young adults and up found this app to be very convenient. It was an easier way to make payments with family and friends rather than giving them cash or a check. Examples would be, venmoing over money as a birthday gift, splitting a bill, paying rent, etc. The transfer also only takes about a minute to go right into your bank account. Venmo also allows you to follow your contacts payments, which customers find fascinating. 

I think this app initially attracted high school and college students, but it also got exposed to adults as the years went on. Teenagers and young adults are much more up to date with the new technology and new applications, most likely why adults or older folks did not know too much about Venmo. I think it all depends on what kind of money transfers you are used to and loyal to. 

There are, however, a few risks that come along with using Venmo. These risks include scams, false claims, or someone hacking into your account. These may be why adults or even young adults may not want to sign up for Venmo. Maybe the late adapters would be the ones staying away from Venmo due to the risks it may have. 

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venmo

Learning about Google Blog #7

After listening to the groups presentation I decided to write my blog about the history of Google. It all started in 1995 when a phD computer science student named Sergey Brin, showed a prospective student named Larry Page around Stanford University. They decided to partner up and launch a search engine called "backrub". In 1998 the original launch of "Google Beta" happened and the hiring of their first ever employee. In 1999 they decided to get rid of the word "Beta" from the title. When 2000 rolled around they further advanced Google by adding new languages. In 2004 the invention of gmail came out. Gmail was an email account connected with Google. In 2018 Google celebrated their 20 year anniversery since their first launch.

Current CEO: Sundar Pichai

However there are some pros and cons to Google. Starting off with the pros, Google is free to society, it is a great research tool, you can create custom search engines, there are many different products and apps that come with Google such as, gmail, google scholar, google calendar, google earth, and google photos. Some of the cons include, not everything you see and find on Google is accurate, it can be very expensive to advertise on Google, and it is cheaper on Bing and Yahoo.

Video Cameras and Recorders

The History of Video Cameras and Recorders

The main reason video cameras became a thing was for broadcast media. The first experiments for this went down in the early 1900s. John Logie Baird was a Scottish engineer who assisted with this work and used a different older device called “Nipkow disk,” a mechanical device that fragments an image into “scanlines” utilizing a rotating saucer with holes cut into it.

By the 1930s new all-electronic designs derived from a cathode-ray video camera tube, containing two pronounced versions by engineers Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zsworykin, replaced the automatic variations with electron scanning technology. This outstanding system was built for broadcasting and soon  came to be the standard in the entertainment industry until the 1980s. 

In 1981 there was a shift from analog to digital video capture. With this came the advancement of the  Sony Mavica single-lens camera. As stated in cctvcameraworld.com, "This camera utilized a rotating magnetic disc, which was 2 inches in diameter and could record up to 50 still frames for playback or printing." Since these pictures were still saved magnetically back then, this digital camera was not an "authentic" digital camera like we see and know today. 

Sony Mavica

Digital security cameras were first used by the military for safety and protection. Even though these cameras themselves were mainly for image converting, recording was viable at the point of the display via videotapes of numerous forms. 

Then came the smaller versions known as the webcams and camera phones. It started with low-quality webcams and forms into even smaller webcams with much better camera quality. Nowadays every computer and cell phone has a built-in camera. We carry them around with us every day and use them every day. So many software use cameras such as Skype, Facebook, FaceTime, Instagram, Snapchat, and so many more. Cameras are also used to produce movies, tv shows, documentaries, youtube videos, etc. 

Since the beginning of video cameras, they have certainly come a long way. It has shaped our everyday lives and we would not have a lot of things if it were not for video cameras. 

LINK: https://www.cctvcameraworld.com/the-history-of-video-cameras.html