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Showing posts from October, 2020

Week 10 Storm

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  Diffusion Theory of  Refrigeration Pioneers/Innovators When we first think of refrigeration, we picture the antique blue ice boxes that our grandparents used to store their food. However, refrigeration extends farther back than the simple rectangle we see today. In the 18th-century, ice harvesting was the only form of refrigeration available, in which servants in England would go and collect ice in the winter and store it in ice houses . Ice houses, " were places where the sheets of ice were packed in salt, wrapped in flannel, and stored underground to keep them frozen until summer,"  ( historyofrefrigeration ) .  While not the most  conventional  form of refrigeration, it aided in slowing the decomposition process of fruit, butter, and vegetables during the summer. This early innovation pioneered the development of the box that we use to this day by creating the idea for a personalized food storage system. The man William Cullen is credited to creating the first refrigerat

Week 8 Storm

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  Mobile Game History For this blog post, I will be focusing on what I learned from Tift's presentation on mobile games. As a game design major, I found this presentation particularly interesting as in our major, there is surprisingly not an abundance of focus on the development of mobile games, despite them being the main money-maker for the games industry.  As is pointed out in Tift's presentation, mobile game's make up about 77.2 billion dollars out of the 159.3 billion dollar industry, or a whopping 48% of its total income. For me, this information is exceedingly useful as throughout my college career, I have focused mainly on developing games for the PC, with only an afterthought of making a mobile game. The reason for this logic is that mobile games have a stigma of being repetitive: the same game republished over and over again with a different appearance. Since the market is incredibly saturated, it is difficult to strike rich from making a mobile game as it will li

Week 7 Key Post: Netflix

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  Netflix: The Streaming King   Netflix needs no introduction. The king of video streaming, Netflix has weaseled its way into the homes of families all across the globe. But how did Netflix extend its influence? Where did it all start? In this key post, I will be discussing the history of Netflix, its influence on the video industry, and pitfalls it has faced over its twenty-three years of existence.  History   The two people pictured above are Reed Hastings (left) and Marc Randolph (right), the founders of Netflix. While according to this article by Dave Butler the stories about Netflix's history differs between Hastings and Randolph, the discrepancies between the two revolve around taking additional credit for Netflix's creation, or specifically,  Hastings attributing not paying a late fee for late rental returns as the reason why Netflix exists.  Netflix was created in 1997 as a way to rent movies through the internet. Within the next year, the website for Netflix was born,