This past weekend Makibie was a sponsor for the 18th Annual St. Joseph Community Services Inc./Meals On Wheels Ballroom Gala. The event was a great success with close to 300 people enjoying great food, music and dancing at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester. A silent auction also took place where attendees were able to bid on over seventy items, and the lucky winner of an annual raffle walked away with a Kindle Fire.

The Gala is St. Joseph Community Services’ biggest fundraiser of the year, with proceeds helping support the Meals On Wheels Program, which provides food and safety to clients throughout Hillsborough County.

Makibie’s own, Terry Bouchie and Christian O’Shaughnessy were also in attendance. Makibie has been the Meals on Wheels web sponsor since 2008 providing design and development services for New Hampshire’s Meals On Wheels agency.  Makibie has partnered with Meals On Wheels in an effort to use the web to drive more donations to the organization in addition to spreading awareness through various social media channels. “It was good to see spirits high.  There is a real, vibrant community around “Meals” and they were out in full force to provide support and be a part of a great overall experience.” ~ Terry Bouchie.

This service is rumored to be an added bonus to Amazon Prime customers. Every month Prime members would be able to read a limited number of older books as part of their annual $79 Prime membership fee.

The Amazon library service is still in the planning stages, but it appears that some publishers are not very happy with the idea. It’s unclear if the plan would allow consumers to download the books or just save them to a device for a limited time. Publishers are in fear though, that this service may devalue books.

The bookstore and publishing industries are already struggling, and with Amazon starting a trend, more companies are likely to follow. The bookstore, Borders, recently closed and the only real power in the bookstore industry appears to be Barnes and Noble. Amazon’s e-book library service may not only hurt bookstores, libraries, and publishers, but manufacturing and shipping companies would also lose business.

The growth of technology services is exciting and convenient in the eyes of consumers, but behind the scenes it is causing a large number of businesses to struggle. Maybe public libraries won’t fade, but instead rent out e-book readers. It is likely though, that this would not be a free service. Times are changing, and along with these changes the idea of a free and friendly service seems to be fading.

Spotify offers three subscription levels. The Premium service, costing $9.99, allows users to play an unlimited amount of music on a computer or cell phone without hearing any advertising. Spotify Unlimited allows advertising-free access only on computers and costs $4.99 a month. The Spotify Free Service has advertisements, does not have the radio feature and will not play through music systems such as Sonos or Squeezebox. Restrictions on the Free service, such as limits on streaming hours, are not yet listed on the site. Spotify is currently taking email addresses to send out invitations for the Free service later.

Spotify has teamed up with its “exclusive launch partners” Coca-Cola and Sprite, Chevrolet, Motorola, Reebok, Sonos and The Daily. They stated that these brands will be launching campaigns in partnership with Spotify in the coming weeks and months.

Your mobile phone will display a caller’s name and picture, but only if you have saved that number as a contact. T-Mobile is attempting to change this. The company announced that they will be the first of the four major U.S. carriers to debut a caller ID feature. T-Mobile calls the new service Name ID.  The system is powered by Cequint, a company that specializes in caller ID technology.

With Name ID, once a caller’s name and location data is displayed on screen, it will allow you to save that information with one click. The service is available immediately on the Samsung Exhibit 4G and will be supported on the T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide later this month.  The Name ID service will cost an extra $3.99 a month, but T-Mobile is offering a 10-day free trial.

So another point is scored for Mobile phones. The use of landline phones is continuously fading, and by adding a key feature, mobile phones will have even more power to take over. It’s funny to think how caller ID was such a necessity for landlines after it was released, but people have been using mobile phones without caller ID and there weren’t many complaints.

From April 26 through May 22, 2011 Pew conducted a telephone survey of 2,277 U.S. adults. Eighty-three percent of the respondents said they owned a cellphone of some kind, while 35% said they owned a smartphone.

The survey also found smartphone ownership trends in relation to finances, age, and race. The results showed that household income does play a role in smartphone ownership, with 59% of those earning $75,000 or more owning a smartphone. Among those surveyed with a college degree or higher education, 48% had smartphones, compared to 18% with no high school diploma.

The people surveyed between the ages of 25 and 34 were most likely to own a smartphone. Race also plays a factor, as 44% of the African-Americans and Latinos surveyed said they own a smartphone, compared to only 30% of whites surveyed.

It was found that 87% of respondents use their smartphones as Internet portals, with about 78% of them doing so every day. Somewhat surprisingly, 25% of owners use their smartphone to access the internet more so than a computer.

Android was found to be the most popular smartphone, being used by 35% of adults with smartphones. The iPhone and Blackberry followed with 24% each.

While the number of smartphone owners is likely to continue growing, it is interesting to think what may happen to the sales of laptops and desktops. Bring in the tablet market and this question grows even larger. If people have two forms of internet access, one in their pocket, and one in their hand, along with an entertainment and work device, what could happen to the basic computer?

The phone takes a picture of the skin, measures the diameter, and uses a proprietary algorithm to determine if the lesion or mole is developing into potential cancerous melanoma. Skin Scan was created by a team of 13 people, including two dermatologists and two mathematicians. The app has received €50,000 Euro in seed funding, and costs $4.99.

Now, having a phone be your dermatologist may sound cool to some people, and foolish to others. Would you trust your phone with your life? There are many possible circumstances that could occur with this app. A very poor circumstance would be that people begin to trust their phone and feel as though they no longer need to go to the dermatologist if they are concerned with a spot on their skin. What if the phone didn’t scan the spot correctly, then what happens? Even if the app was only inaccurate on rare occasions it could still lead to death, and most likely lawsuits.

Skin Scan also produces a live global map of the skin cancer rates it diagnosis. Hopefully this map will then be used to analyze why rates may be higher in certain locations. A doctor in your pocket may sound like a cool idea, but I’m not so sure about this one.

On June 22, 2011 Google invested another $102 million into the Alta Wind Energy Center in Tehachapi, California, after investing $55 million in May. The wind power will be sold to utility Southern California Edison under a power purchase agreement that was signed in 2006. When the project is complete, it should create 1,550MW of energy, enough to power 450,000 homes. Google states that it will not purchase any of the energy produced at Alta.

As Google’s business is based around energy, they know its value and are passionate about the clean energy movement. Google competitors, such as Microsoft and Amazon also face the challenges of energy consumption. If the competitors follow Google’s path, the clean energy movement will be more successful and continue to grow. Hopefully Google’s passion will spread to the competitors.

The smartpad runs on Google’s Android operating system, and the displays are WVGA AMOLED. It runs a dual-core TI processor paired with 1GB of DDR3 memory and between 32GB and 128GB of internal storage, augmented with a microSD card slot.

This gadget is months away from being available to the public, but it appears that it may have great success. Our country has become devoted, if not addicted, to mobile electronics. We love our smartphones, and now we love our tablets. What if we could combine them into one and keep it in our pocket? Well here you go. A phone and tablet to fit in our pockets that we can pop open whenever we need more than a smartphone. Just be careful though, while you’re walking down the street look up every once in awhile, you wouldn’t want to bump your head.

Apple is known for obtaining patents, and the patents are known for causing multi-company disputes.  If this patent is to truly succeed, companies such as Samsung and HTC are in for some trouble. The patent does allow for some leeway though.  It appears that infringement would only occur if every characteristic off the patent claims are used. There are 20 characteristics in total.  While applying all 20 characteristics may be unlikely, this patent is still sure to cause problems amongst competitors.

Good World Games created the new Facebook app, My Conservation Park, with a philanthropic cause in mind. The game challenges players to create sustainable habitats for endangered species while protecting them from environmental and human threats.

Users can purchase virtual assets to improve their park, including park rangers, plants, native species, and water. All purchases within the game directly benefit non-profit organizations, with 15% of every purchase being donated to conservation organizations, such as Dian Fossey, Sea Sheperd, and Gorilla Fund.

This game not only raises funds for planet-conscious organizations, but it gives users insight into how difficult it is to protect and save endangered species. The game presents challenges to the users and also provides informative videos about population growth and endangered species.

There is a strong power within the world of social gaming, and by adding a planet-friendly cause, the passion of the gamers may not only raise funds for endangered species, but also increase awareness of how humans are affecting the planet.