Headline March 18, 2016/ ''' TECHNOLOGY & *HAPPINESS '''

''' TECHNOLOGY & *HAPPINESS '''

WHY THE WORLD LOVES THE DIGITAL LIFE..........Take the radio : it's not a radio no more, but a  SoundBridge. a sleek cylinder about five by 25 centimetres-

Connecting my sound system on the main floor with the Internet and with my desktop computer upstairs in my office. I tune in to wherever my mood takes me.

Today, it's London tonight, some smooth jazz, and on the weekend, some hot Latin salsa from Miami.  Radio stations around the world stream their programmes in online, and all I do to listen is click, narrates the author.

I also tap into my CDs, which is loaded into the second hard drive of my computer, and pull up any artist, album or pre-set play list at a glance. No rustling through the drawers, where the originals are stacked. 

THE FUTURE IS NOW  -and we're absorbing these advances into our daily lives. The line between work, play and family is blurring because technology allows us to do many things, anywhere, anytime.

Many resent the pressure it brings, but our digital lifestyle is as much a part of us, as the first ray of sun in the morning. No one can imagine a life without it. And with that, we turn to for some more, from  this great, technology storyteller:

I was in Shanghai for a mobile computing conference. During a break we .

got to talking about television broadcast to mobile phones. One of our group, Eddie Chan, an incredibly smart guy who works as an analyst for technology consultants    IDC, Canada-

Pulled out his Dell Axim,  -a handheld computer that connects to the Internet via  Wi-Fi   [one of the types of  wireless technology]. Within minutes, we were watching a  ''Toronto all-news channel. Now that's cool.

Eddie also has a  Slingbox, a gizmo that connects to his TV's cable-set-top box and let's him pull programming wherever he has Internet-access. It's a great way to watch your favourite sports team or get the news from home when you're on the road with your hand-held or laptop computer. Gotta have it, I thought  

Another friend, Mark Stoakes, the general manager of Kromer Radio,a well established audio and video store in Toronto  -has the tech laden car of my dreams.

I imagine what it must be like: Waiting at the driving-through? No problem; I'd catch a few minutes of the local TV news or check the sports scores. Our weekend road trip is behind schedule because of the Friday-night exodus from the city?

Not a peep out of the kids; they're too busy playing Sony PlayStation2 or watching movies with their headphones on, while we listen to our tunes up front. And I'd never have to stop and ask for directions, because the car's on-board Global Positioning System [GPS] does the navigating.

I may not have a navigational system in my car, but I do have one on my mobile phone. My Hewlett-Packard [HP] iPAQ is a  ''smart phone'' -more computer than a mobile phone, it let's me email, web surf, open Word Documents and even make free long-distance calls if there's Wi-Fi connection available.

It also has a memory-card slot, as I can load music into it and connect it to my wireless headphones.

OK, this is great stuff for geeks. But can technology make you happy? My answer is yes.

I'm happy our dog, Rusty, has a microchip planted in her flesh at the shoulder, so if she ever strays, we'll find her. My 78-year-old father is thrilled to stay in touch with friends and family around the world via email using the laptop.

I take it one step further, making phone calls over the internet. My eldest child, is studying to be a chef and spent four months in Italy during her postgraduate programme, learning about Italian cuisine.

With a laptop, webcam and internet phone, she stayed in contact with her friends, and, of course, me, if only to ask for more money!

But you can't put a price on seeing and talking to your daughter when she's thousands of kilometres away.

More than that, technology helped bring mum back to life. She died more than a decade ago, and when dad finally packed up the house and downsized, he left me with a suitcase of family snapshots and about 3000 slides.

To enjoy slides, you have to hand out a projector and a screen  -unless you digitize them. But this was also a challenge, because most consumer scanners don't do these pictures justice.

Then, in Las Vegas at the International Electronics Show   -the world's largest  consumer-technology trade show  -I spotted an HP ScanJet 4050, which comes with a plastic insert designed for slides. 

I was so impressed with the device that I bought one, then edited my slide collection down to about 200 pictures spanning from around 1955 to 1972. 

For Dad's recent birthday, we gave him a digital picture frame loaded with those long-lost shots of my mum and their life together. The look on his face as the automated slide show rekindled those memories was priceless. I know it made him happy, and it made me happy, too.

Now I am going to go through the milk crates under the stairs and pull out my favourite LP's to digitise. Along the way, I'll also scan in the best of the photo albums and share them on CDs and sending them out for Christmas.

And at some point -when time allows-  we'll pull out the reel-to-reel tapes that were audio letters home to England.

And then there's another piece of technology you've just got to have. At a conference in New York, I saw my next  ''must have'' : a home server. You see, as everything goes digital, we'll need a place to store all our movies. pictures and music.

A home server is a robust computer with lots of storage space   -but no screen. Literally it  ''serves'' files to any computer connected to it. It will also let me access my files when I'm on the road, a feature that's invaluable for work.

Eventually as home technology and services advance, we would use it to store downloaded movies, instead of renting DVDs or recording television shows or sports events. 

It would even run  my home security and surveillance system, sending an alert to my mobile device if an alarm was triggered, so I could log on and monitor from anywhere and immediately know if something was amiss.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Last Laugh '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless