Tech Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Serious Startups

Turnitin Curbing Plagiarism In College Admission Essays

If you’re applying to colleges right now and think that you’re going to get by with turning in someone else’s essay you could be dead wrong. Turnitin is a software program that over 100 colleges and universities across the country are using to curb plagiarism.

Turnitin has been around since the 1990’s however two years ago they developed a version of the software specifically for admissions essays. Before that it was used at the high school and college level to curb plagiarism in essays written by students about a myraid of topics. Long gone are the days you could go to the frat house file cabinet and slap your name on an essay that’s been turned in five times.

UCLA’s graduate program is one of the institutions that has implemented the software on the admissions level. According to school officials they found a dozen plagiarized admissions essays among the 870 submitted. It seems that copying admissions essays isn’t that big a problem with that percentage. Penn State’s Smeal School of business is also using the software and reported just 3 to 5% of their admissions essays were copied.

The prospective students who turn in plagiarized essays are of course not admitted to the school. It’s unclear whether or not they are told why.

source: BI

CEA Opened Eureka Park In 2012

The Consumer Electronics Association, the producers of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), this year introduced a new area to CES. Over the years CEA has added several category specific areas to the ever-growing show floor. China, Korea and Japan all have their own areas in addition to the ability to spring for a full booth on the main show floor.

Eureka Park was housed in the Venetian hotel which was also home to the exhibits in the 70000 area and PMA which is the photography convention that merged with CES this year.

Putting Eureka park in the Venetian hotel as opposed to the convention center, allowed CEA to offer start-ups their own place to play and show off their wares, apps and ideas. It also allowed CEA to offer booth space at the largest trade show in the western hemisphere at a lower cost than the premium spaces at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

More after the break
Read More…

CES 2012: Check Out WipNet Use Your Home’s Coax For Your Network

Wi-fi boosters that use your homes existing copper wire in your AC or electrical lines are nothing new. Motorola, D-Link, Linksys and just about every other company with a specialty in networking have introduced some kind of two box system that does just that. The folks at Wi3 Inc have designed something a little different that works a lot better.

The WiPNet system uses your homes existing coax cable lines to give you the option of a hardwired ethernet connection or a wi-fi connection at each box location.

The modular boxes connect to your homes coax via existing coax outlets. As you can see in the video there is an “on the wall” solution for the modular box as well as an above ground box for those that have coax cable that comes through the floor.

WiPNet uses a technology called “Mocha” that distributes the signal at its original speed throughout the coax lines.

You can find out more here

HTC Formally Announces Sensation XE With Beats By Dre

You may have heard rumors over the past few weeks that HTC was fine tuning and re-issuing the HTC Sensation 4G. This new HTC Sensation brings

HTC has taken the original Sensation and added Beats Audio by Dre to it. In addition they’ve thrown in a pair of Beats by Dre Headphones as well. According to the press release from HTC (found after the break) The Sensation XE is coming to Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia later this month. No Word on US.

Press release after break

StartupBus Kick-Off Party July 8th in San Fran

What do you get when you add some beer, a bus, a bunch of hackers, pizza, coffee, Mountain Dew and ideas? The Start Up Bus, why that’s what!

The StartupBus is the brain child of Elias Bizannes who thought if you throw a bunch of entrepreneurial minded hackers into a moving bus they could come up with excellence, and they have. The start up bus started in 2010 as a half baked idea by Bizannes to take a bus full of likeminded individuals from the bay area to sxsw to launch their start ups. Well apparently this idea caught on and people began to blog about it. This left Bizannes having to find a bus and actually do the trip.

Fast forward to 2011 and this time he had multiple buses from across the country all leave just before SXSW and launch their ideas at SXSW. The catch though, whatever was launched had to have been created on the bus. The busriders formed teams after deciding on the project. Some members would code the back end, some would code the front end. Other team members would jump on the phone with their colleagues, investors, friends and potential users to drum up excitement.

Sleep is evidently not an option. This is the mother of all hackathons on wheels.

Tomorrow StartupBus is launching the next phase of the start up bus at it’s new headquarters, the start up house. If you’re in the bay area and a start up minded individual you can bet that the Start Up bus launch party will be worth checking out. StartupBus has some very exciting news they will be sharing on site tomorrow night. If you can’t make it to the event check here Saturday morning!

Want to sign up email: info@nibletz.com