Wired

Literally, Literally, Literally

U.S. President Barack Obama's sidekick, Joe Biden, said "literally" so many times in his speech at the Democratic National Convention it trended on Twitter -- literally.

Obama's competition, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, was the first political campaign to buy a trending topic on Twitter.

His team paid Twitter to have #RomneyRyan2012 appear as a trending topic throughout the last night of the Republican National Convention.

Web site Gizmodo called it "a pathetic bid for social currency." I personally think buying a trending topic on Twitter is incredibly lame. Trending topics are supposed to be generated organically.

After Biden's very literal speech, which was embarrassing for the party, Obama embraced the word "literally" and bought an advertisement for the word. The advertisement would direct people to his Twitter account when they investigated the trending topic, "literally." I thought it was pretty neat to see Obama's team take such bad press and turn it around to be a funny item on Twitter. I also find it extremely cool that in this election, the difference in Twitter followers is incredible. Mitt Romney has just over one million followers, while Obama has over 19 million. It's also been reported Romney has purchased a lot of followers, indicating a large percentage of his following is fake.

IPhone 5 video leak

APPLE will take centre stage Sept. 12 to announce the iPhone 5. Since that date is only three days away, the tech-rumour community has been going crazy over the new features they expect to be included. The community has also released a very Apple-looking video showcasing all the new features of the iPhone 5. In the past, I've mentioned the screen will be bigger, the device will be thinner, there will be a unibody design, and it's suspected the 30-pin dock connector will be done away with and a new smaller dock connector will be integrated.

That's what we know for sure. What the video showcased, besides those features I just mentioned, are new features I think will be extremely cool. The first feature that kind of blew my mind was fingerprint scanner. Originally, if you wanted to lock your iPhone, you would set a passcode. Apparently, the iPhone 5, will integrate a fingerprint scanner that is built into the home button. Now to unlock your device, all you have to do is touch your finger on the home button, it scans your print, and then lets you into your phone. That is awesome.

Another feature is the screen will be a double-wide retina display. So no, the phone most likely won't get that much taller; Apple will just expand the screen horizontally. Something else I found cool was apparently the 5 would have two times the amount of RAM; which essentially means twice as fast.

And while the biggest storage capacity an iPhone 4 had was 64 GB, the iPhone 5 will apparently have storage options up to 128 GB. People are collecting a lot of media as they go about their daily lives and having the ability to sync it all to their phones makes a lot of sense. Why limit the user, right?

These are the rumoured features for the iPhone 5. You can find out what's really going to come with the device if you check in on the tech blogosphere regularly Sept. 12. If you were looking for a good site to get info, I'd recommend using TheVerge.com, Techno Buffalo, or Mashable. Those three sites, in that order, will have really good live blogs covering the event as it happens.

Video Link: http://bit.ly/NSrNjb

Google's shares soar

IN November 2007, Google shares hit an all-time high of $747.24. This past week, Google shares soared over $700 once again. The shares closed at $706.15, and peaked at $712.25. Google's shares have gained 19 per cent since the company's last reported earnings. A big reason for Google's stock shooting up is because of the favourable buzz over the seven-inch Nexus tablet. Another reason is the integration of Motorola into Google products. Google acquired Motorola Mobility this year for $12.5 billion.

These are just a few reasons for Google's stock increase. I find it cool Google has kept its stocks steady over the years as an Internet company. It's funny, because a fellow Internet company, Facebook, is absolutely tanking. Google and Facebook are absolutely polar opposites when it comes to the stock market, it seems.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 10, 2012 ??0