Facebook Phone

It was announced earlier this week that Facebook might be releasing their own mobile phone by next year.
Facebook has been hiring some ex-apple employees to work on the new phone and if the phone is released it might even be a half decent. Hundreds of apps and websites currently give you the option to 'Log in with Facebook' so the Facebook app store will give you a good verity of games and useful apps.
The closest thing Facebook has to it's own mobile phone the HTC ChaCha. It has it's own Facebook button at the bottom of the keyboard which lets you share photo's and video's instantly.
The HTC ChaCha and Windows Phones have Facebook chat integrated so if a Facebook phone was released what new features would it bring to the smartphone market? Most mobile operating systems have been designed around social networks such as Facebook and rumours say that the next iPhone OS will be Facebook integrated.
So although the Facebook Phone might attract some dedicated Facebook-ers I doubt it will be a success because everything you can do on Facebook you can do on other phones plus more. And although the Facebook app store might be big it won't be able to match the application markets of Apple and Android. We still don't know the details of this phone or the price however I think unless it announces something revolutionary we will end up with just another company which has tried and failed in the smartphone market.

Shine Awards

Since we entered the Shine Awards earlier this year we haven't really heard much back from the competition organisers until recently when they announced that we have been nominated for 3 awards.
The three awards are for best commercial strategy, the best over-all content and the most inspirational person (me). We were in the top 43 out of 300 schools.
However on the 22nd May the judges decided which Schools they wanted in the final for the media competition. I'm unsure what category we are still nominated for however we will be going to the final in London on the 25th of June 2012!
Since then we have been featured in 3 newspapers. (The Evening Gazette - Page 12, The Northern Echo - Page 4 and The Advertiser - Front page!

Despite other entered schools being private and grammar schools I'm confident that we will be able to walk away with at least 1 award next month.

Commonwealth

The Commonwealth is a group of countries who have Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. Her diamond Jubilee is early in June and she is celebrating 60 years in the throne, all the countries in the Commonwealth will be celebrating. The British Royal Mint will be releasing a £5 coin and people in the Commonwealth will be having parties and days off school and work.
The Song Gary Barlow has released a song after traveling to some of the commonwealth countries. It features people from those countries and the military wives. The money made from the sales will be donated to the queens charites.
Publicity Before her diamond Jubilee there was a Blue Peter competition launched to make an emblem for the day. This will be featured on sides of coaches and one of the official logos for the day.
The Throne After Queen Elizabeth II leaves the throne it will be passed down to her son Charles who is currently the price of Wales. In the last year the queen has passed a restriction stopping the prices to get the thrown before the princesses even if the princesses are older.
The Games Every 4 years there is the Commonwealth games where countries in the Commonwealth get the opportunity to compete at sports. A few years ago it was in Manchester and it started new possibilities for the city. It introduced a new Velodrome for cycling and 50 metre swimming pool. (Hopefully the Olympic Games in London will have the same, if not bigger effect on the city and the country.)

Francois Hollande can talk the talk but can he walk the walk?

Francois Hollande is the new president of France, he is from the French socialist party and his party actually has some good ideas. I was reading through his policies today and below are some of the policies I think are the best.


Francois Hollande Policies
• Foreign policy: supports the withdrawal of French troops present in Afghanistan by the end of 2012.
• Energy: endorses reducing the share of nuclear power in electricity generation from 75 to 50% in favor of renewable energy sources.
• Education: supports the recruitment of 60,000 new teachers, the creation of a study allowance and means-tested training, setting up a mutually beneficial contract that would allow a generation of experienced employees and craftsmen to be the guardians and teachers of younger newly-hired employees, thereby creating a total of 150,000 subsidized jobs.
• Aid to small and medium enterprise, with the creation of a public bank investment-oriented SME's and reducing the corporate tax rate to 30% for medium corporations and 15% for small.
• Recruitment of 5,000 judges, police officers and gendarmes.
• Construction of 500,000 homes per year, including 150,000 small houses for poor people, funded by a doubling of the ceiling of the A passbook, the State making available its local government land within five years.
• Restoration of retirement at age 60 for those who have contributed more than 41 years.
• The provision of development funds for deprived suburbs.


They are good policies however if they can implemented is a completely other story. Earlier this week Germany was telling  Francois Hollande that some of his other policies regarding the Euro and money won't be able to be implemented. So for now I think it is a matter of time before we see if he is a perfect president or a ludicrous leader.

Thoughts on the DSMS TV Studio so far...

The Studio
The TV Studio has now been almost in fully working order for just over a month now (there are still small developments to be made) and I think that it has been an amazing resource for the school to have. There is so much you can use it for! Making music videos, filming drama pieces, producing a news show or just experiencing how a TV studio works.

When I first started working with he TV studio I couldn't believe how many jobs both in font and behind camera there were. For a start you need a good script written, then someone to run it on the auto-cue, someone to set up the camera shots and the set and sometimes even a group of people to sort out the green screen.

The Wyvern
A few weeks ago we released the first pilot episode of the Wyvern TV where we interviewed Jenny Chapman (MP of Darlington). Despite some parts of the show being quite quiet and pauses at some parts I would say they the first episode was a success.

Link to Wyvern TV Episode 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK7KvsE4EQQ&feature=plcp&context=C42505b7VDvjVQa1PpcFOzUAPxUHq1hv9q_iBLVh7PHV9rO05atRM%3D

My personal ideas for future episodes include a section called 'Pupils Perspective' where we ask fellow pupils at the school for their opinion on recent topics happening in and out of school.
Maybe some sort of feature on a teacher where we can ask teachers some questions and find out their view on things (although we do already do this in every edition of 'The Wyvern' newspaper).

Please, if anyone has any more idea's you can leave them in the comments box of the YouTube video or tweet them to us @DSMS_Wyvern 

Thank you :)

The Grand National Overshadowed by Horse Deaths

The horses are getting ready to line up for the start of the 2012 Grand national however one horse, Synchronised, flipped under the pressure of thousands of people watching, filming and gambling on him so he throws his jockey (AP McCoy) to the floor.
After reuniting horse with jockey the race started but before the tenth fence Synchronised has fallen and sustained such injury that he needs to be put down.

Since the 1800's the grand national has been running and since the beginning there has almost always be at least 1 seriously injured horse. I don't know if it is because social networks have been becoming more popular recently or if this has always been a idly spoken about problem but this year there were LOADS of negative status's, tweets and headlines regarding animal cruelty at the grand national. Is it right that horses should be raced so hard that there is a possibility that they might die?

Some people think yes because it is traditional and has happened for the last 100+ years.

Unlike humans, if horses break a bone it doesn't repair it's self, instead it stays broken and causes the horse excruciating pain and pneumonia. This is why horse race organisers decide to put the animals down before the pain gets too bad.

Fortunately, regulations have been made to help horses welfare, like how they made a limit of how many times you could whip your horse. They also changed the grand national course from last year to make it more safe (this didn't work though as there was still horse fatalities).

This raises the question of 'Should horse racing be banned altogether?' However unless something stupidly dangerous happens during a race (which I hope won't happen), Horse racing will continue the way it is now where healthy horses die because of pure human entertainment and greed.

RIP SYNCHRONISED and ACCORDING TO PETE

iPhoto and iMovie

Can you guess which one of these two photos (left) has been tweaked by Apple's new iPad app, iPhoto?

Might be a bit obvious because of all the blury bits but it is photo 1 that I've edited. Earlier today I took a photo of my hamster and attempted to remove her shadow using iPhoto which came out on 7th March 2012 with the 'New iPad'. The app has lots of easy features to use such as the multi-touch editing, a massive supply of effects and 'Photo Journals' where you can put photos into a journal and share them on iCloud.

The features may be easy to use however there are lots of them and sometimes the buttons become a little confusing, especially if you are like me and like to understand things straight away. But I'm sure after a little practise, I will finally get the hang of this app.
I don't know if this app is available on iPod Touch however it is available for iPad and iPhone.

I remember before Christmas I was waiting for a iPad so I would be able to experience iMovie however after paying £2.99 I must admit that I was very disappointed however with the recent update, it works quite well. I don't know exactly what's changed however it works considerably better than the old version.

Apple

On the 7th March 2012 the new Apple TV and the 'New iPad' was announced.
Apple TV
The new £99 Apple TV, available from the 16 March, has an easy to use user interface, iTunes and iCloud. iCould means that the Apple TV can sync all of the photos, videos and music from your iPod or iPhone to the Apple TV.
New iPad
This has a 5X prosessor which is apparently more than double as fast than the A5 chip currently in the iPhone 4S. It's new retina display is 2048 x 1536 with over 3.1million pixels and 264 pixels per inch. The New iPad also has a new 'iSight' camera which is the same as the one on the iPhone 4S so it is 5MP with auto-focus and auto-exposure. Amazingly despite all of this change, the New iPad will remain the same price of £399 and is available from March 16. Unfortunately the battery life of the new iPad remains the same (10 hours), also it is slightly thicker and slightly heavier than the iPad 2.
iOS 5.1
Apple also announced iOS 5.1. The upgrade will bring Siri, the personal assistant, to Japan and Australia (UK unknown yet), and is apparently available today.
Apps
Many of the apps currently made by Apple are getting revamped so they can take advantage of the new iPad HD display. Garage-band is also getting a new 'Jam Session' feature where multiple instruments can be played together. Apple has also announced iPhoto for iPad which is being described as a sophisticated photo editor with multi-touch editing. It also uses iCloud in a new way to help you share your photos.

I finally get the line right!

Filming the new Wyvern News show today at the DSMS studio and I hate having to remember lines and when I do, I say them in the wrong order but I get there eventually...

Dog-bot

On 25th February 2012 at an Olympic STEM business event at the Dolphin centre we met a man from QE who had a Lego PIC car with him.
(A PIC car is a car which can navigate itself using sensors.)
Anyway, the Lego PIC car looked like a dog and it was amazing! It had a inferred sensor on the front to stop it from crashing into things and then the dog would turn its head, take 4 sensor readings and set off again in a different direction. The dog also had a colour sensor on the bottom so the QE students would be able to program the dog to only move on certain colours however the best thing about the dog was the noise sensors it had built in. These are so if you shout loudly at the dog it moves backwards. Finally there was a sensor on the tail of the dog so if it reverses into something by accident it knows to stop.
I thought this would be relevant because at the DSMS STEM club we are building a PIC car however instead of being made out of Lego, ours is made out of recycled materials.