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Sam’s Club and Mobile Technology

Founded by Sam Walton of Walmart fame in 1983 and is a division of Walmart, Sam’s Club is a popular membership warehouse club housing numerous items, such as foods, jewelry, books, and office chairs. Sam’s Club has recently made strategic use of mobile technology as a means of replacing the traditional retail experience with increased convenience for costumers. Since the launch of their mobile app in the 2010s, it has many features, according to Belic (2010), such as fast store location through GPS, and eValues, special discounts supplied by membership cards and notify users of any new offers being present. Moreover, as of 2024, Sam’s Club has made a new feature for the app called Scan & Go, which lets users use the mobile app to scan items the retail store provides and as Carbonaro (2025) notes, all purchases are done through the app in real-time and then scanned by cameras to confirm if the purchase was legitimate, much like how a retailer uses a POS (point of scale) Scanner to...
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Apple’s M Chip series

  Part of Apple’s M series of chips, the M1 has been integrated into many Apple devices since 2020, replacing the older Intel processors in their products since 2006. The M1 is unique, as it fuses important hardware assets such as GPU and CPU to a singular silicon chip, which saves space and allows swift performance. Additionally, the M1’s UMA (Unified Memory Architecture) allows the chip’s components to share memory from all sides and is faster and more power-efficient than the older Intel ones. Moreover, a distinct engine, called the Neural Engine, is designed to handle numerous demanding tasks simultaneously while saving power, and Onyeanuna (2024) notes that it can withstand 11 trillion ongoing operations every second, such as multiple tabs and video editing software with no lag in performance. Like the iPhone series, the M1 has different versions, like the M1 Pro or M1 Ultra, which beef up the hardware to perform even better with demanding tasks, such as higher memory storag...

The Dangers of TikTok and Its Monumental Impact

  Created by ByteDance in 2016, TikTok is a popular social media app that has become a phenomenon since its worldwide release in 2017 and has been downloaded approximately 49 million times as of 2025. The app is infamous for providing short videos lasting less than a minute, with many visual effects on the screen and catchy music to keep viewers engaged. Given the fast-paced nature of the app, TikTok users create a series of challenges to gain social recognition and validation, ranging from humorous to outright dangerous and even leading to misinformation. A recent example of a TikTok challenge that has gone wrong is the “Door Kick Challenge,” which, as the name suggests, depicts TikTok users filming themselves kicking down doors. Willets (2024) notes that minors are primarily performing the challenge. Those minors will be charged with trespassing. Additionally, TikTok impacted the mental health of millions, which is especially concerning given its addictive nature, even with the...

Uber & Airbnb

  Founded in 2008 and 2009 respectively, Airbnb and Uber are two American companies notorious for robust marketing strategies and efficient business models and philosophies. Uber’s business differs from Airbnb in that Uber relies on mobile platforms via their app being easily accessible while also using algorithms and the GPS of a phone to determine where customers drop, pick, or choose a destination to where Uber’s drivers can take them. According to Katariya (2024), Uber takes full advantage of the MaaS (Mobility as a Service) concept through a series of easily approachable steps: The user needs to: register, enable location sharing, find a driver, confirm and execute a ride, and process the overall payment with Uber’s app. Airbnb’s business model operates by charging both guest and host fees when renting or purchasing a house through the Airbnb app. According to Sridharan (2022), the host fee ranges from 3% to 5%, including commissions, compared to the guest fees, which can ra...

Art Analysis: The Persistence of Memory!

This famous painting from 1931 is one of the most influential works of art ever produced. This surrealistic painting is notorious for its bizarre yet consistent aesthetic and color palette. The variety of colors and shading is what shapes its iconic environment. Its influence still applies to many abstract works of the modern era and is even referenced in shows such as The Simpsons. I always found the clocks in the painting symbolic in that they are a visual metaphor for how time flies fast and waits for no one. As for the ants on the watch, I think they represent the process of decaying after death, which makes sense as ants eat dead bodies in real life as well. The odd creature, the most famous portion of the painting, seems to be an exaggerated caricature of Salvador Dalí himself. In a way, this creature may represent how a person would live in a dreamscape.

The genius design of Java!

Here's Duke! The Java mascot. Java is a programming language created in 1995 and is one of the most popular programming languages in history. Developed by James Gosling and Sun Microsystems, Java uses an object-oriented programming method and is compatible with many operating systems, such as Android, macOS, and Microsoft Windows. Additionally, the portability of the programming language allowed things such as virtual machines and GUI designs. Furthermore, due to its strong security, Java has been a big help in keeping web development and web applications safe and secure. The constant evolution of Java throughout the decades means that the programming language has undergone many quality-of-life changes, such as improved performance. Since then, Java has become very popular, and its high accessibility to veterans and newcomers has caused its usage to grow exponentially.     Java is also helpful with securing networks since it can reach networks of any speed with little to ...