Tips Tuesday: Send Your Kids Back to School with the Best Suited Device for Them

As August is coming to a close, friends and family are trying to catch their last 'fun in the sun' moments before summer officially ends, and school begins. In light of it being back-to-school month, and having the added stresses that come along with that, I wanted to share a resourceful article with great information about picking the right device that fits your youngsters needs. The article is titled "How to Pick the Right Back-to-School Computer for Your Kid." Check it out to see some suggestions regarding which computers are best for kids of different ages. 

Photo Credit: www.imore.com

Not only is picking the right device important, but choosing the right support to go along with that technology is also key. With so many consumers turning to mobile and portable devices, the best way to respond to troubleshooting, diagnosing problems, and how-to support questions is to utilize light-weight and intuitive self-help options such as Virtual Agents. 

Since the kids of this generation are growing up in a technology driven society (also referred to as the App Generation), it is inevitable that they will utilize their devices in school settings. Parents need to know how to pick the right one, and teachers need to learn how to incorporate the kids identity with technology and use it in their curriculum. "Born after 1990, members of this generation have been surrounded and immersed to an unprecedented degree by technology: laptops, tablets, smartphones, handheld devices of every size and shape. Unlike so-called digital immigrants, they cannot remember a less technological era; indeed, unlike every previous generation, most of them do not know what it is like the be lost" (The App Generation: How Technology is Changing Us). 

What devices work best for your family's needs? Do they like the kid-friendly touchscreens or the more advanced software for performance?
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Throwback Thursday: Before the Internet of Everything (IoE)

Happy Throwback Thursday! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, with a great start to the new year.

For the first throwback of the year, I thought I would dive into a hot topic of 2014, the Internet of Everything (IoE). More and more devices are connecting to the internet daily. In the past (circa 2003), only 500 million devices were connected. (The Internet of Things: How the Next Evolution of the Internet Is Changing Everything) That sounds like a lot for that time, but when you look at it from a world population stand point, it is less than one device for every person in the world. 

As of 2012, Cisco found that the number of devices connected to the Internet was about 8.7 billion. (How Many Things Are Currently Connected to the “Internet of Things” (IoT)?) Since the launch of Smartphones and tablets, the amount of devices connected to the internet has increased significantly, meaning there is a little over one device connected to the internet per person. This massive increase can be correlated with the launch of Apple's iPhone and other smartphones/tablets. Smartphones are not the only smart machines on the market though, there are smart cars, smart TV’s, smart refrigerators, even smart coffee machines. The goal of the IoE is for all these different devices to be able to work with each other; Bridging the communication gap between man and machine.    

The predictions for the future of the IoE are positive. Leading analyst firms and Fortune 500 companies agree that by 2015 there will be an estimated 15 billion devices connected and by 2020 there will be over 30 billion devices connected to the Internet. What do you think about these numbers? Will the IoE change the way we live for the better?   

Subscribe to noHold's blog to find out how Virtual Agents play a role in the Internet of Everything (IoE)/Internet of Things (IoT).