The Tech Edition

the

shark Week Dr. Dan Huber puts Jaws under the microscope

Pg. 06

Noah’s Arc Basketball machine improves players’ shooting

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tech

edition

06 PG. 05-20 14 16 Gadgets & 22 Gizmos PG. 21-30 27 29 What’s 34 APP-ening?

PG. 31-43 38 41 Tech In the Classroom

SHARKS— WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER LAB

THINK YOU CAN HACK IT IN THIS CLASS?

LET KEVIN SPACEY BE YOUR NEW TEACHER

NOAH’S ARC IS ON THE BALL

APPLE AND SAMSUNG BATTLE IT OUT

A ROBOCOP THAT FITS IN YOUR POCKET

DO YOU EVEN LIFTSYNC?

FUEL YOUR APP-ETITE

CATCH A FREE RIDE WITH DOWNTOWNER

MINARET ISSUE 83.12 | TECH EDITION | NOVEMBER 2016 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MANAGING EDITOR PRODUCTION EDITOR

Tess Sheets Bianca Lopez Selene San Felice

NEWS AND FEATURES

Arden Igleheart Liz MacLean Kaitlyn Stockdale Ivy Velazquez Kelly Smith Carissa Economos John Feltman Candace Martino

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT OPINION SPORTS

HEAD COPY PHOTOGRAPHY GRAPHIC DESIGN MULTIMEDIA

Rebecca Turner Julia Albini Christian Maldonado Regina Gonzalez

FACULTY ADVISER

David Wheeler

WRITERS

Roberto Abedrabbo Elena de Alfredo Gabe Cohn Jill Conway Micaela Figueroa Amanda Franz Vincent Perstad Faith Ponti Christian Pranzo Daina Stanley

COPY EDITING Katelyn Massarelli

PHOTOGRAPHERS Elena De Alfredo Kevin Frey

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WE GIVE YOU DIRECTION. YOU LEAD THE WAY. Graduate Open House Reception Thursday, Dec. 8, at 6 p.m.

Vaughn Center, Ninth Floor Come learn more about UT’s graduate programs!

Get advice from faculty, admissions counselors, academic advisors, current students and alumni.

The session will begin with a general overview of graduate studies at UT, followed by separate breakout sessions for each program area of interest.

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INFORMATION WILL BE PROVIDED ABOUT: • 4 +1 MBA and other MBA programs • M.S. in Accounting • M.S. in Entrepreneurship • M.S. in Finance • M.S. in Marketing • Certificate in Nonprofit Management

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TECH CLAS IN T SROO HE M

PG. 0

5-20

For this professor,

shark week is every week

By Arden Igleheart

THE THE MINARET MINARET || PAGE PAGE 628

w

hen Dr. Dan Huber, shark expert and associate professor of biology, was eight years old, his cousin was attacked by a shark in the waters near Daytona Beach. His cousin survived without sustaining permanent injuries, but it left a lasting impression on Huber.

“It was just one of those formative experiences,” Huber said. “My whole family freaked out; no one wanted to go in the water anymore. But they couldn’t keep me out of the water, and I’ve been chasing sharks ever since.”

Huber began attending programs at the aquarium in Long Island and got involved in research when he started college.

Since then, Huber has been on Shark Week about 20 times, with appearances on the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and the History Channel. Last year, a film crew came to his lab to shoot Huber for a documentary on Megalodon, a 50-foot long prehistoric species of shark.

Huber thought about majoring in architecture in college, but ended up choosing biology. He mainly studies the skeletal mechanics and feeding mechanisms of sharks, which he says is actually important for the fields of architecture and engineering. In graduate school, he saw the ways that shark and stingray skeletons do seemingly impossible things, and managed to do research that connected the two fields.

“Sharks have a cartilaginous skeleton, and

if you think about the cartilage in your ears or your nose; it bends when you push on it,” Huber said. “So you wouldn’t think that sharks and stingrays would be able to do the incredible things that they do with a skeleton that bends when you push on it.

They’re among the hardest biting, fastest swimming, most powerful animals in the entire ocean.”

This is something that architects, engineers, and biomedical engineers can learn a lot from, according to Huber. Sharks, with their soft skeleton, are able to bite down and break things that are harder than they are.

Regenerative medicine is a field that could benefit from knowing this, as shark skeletons maintain this durability while growing.

A recent example of shark biomechanics being used in an engineering field is Olympic swimwear, some of which was designed to mimic shark skin because the skin evolved to reduce drag. Huber knows someone who 3D prints shark scales and is testing their effectiveness on the rotors of helicopters to make their flight more efficient.

In 2008, Huber’s research got worldwide media coverage for applying Finite Element Analysis, an engineering technique, to the feeding mechanisms of great white sharks.

Huber explained what a finite element analysis would look like on a chair.

“In the engineering world, any product that you use on a daily basis was designed in a computer program before anyone actually manufactured it,” Huber said. “In that computer program, they can tell different relations about how it will perform; what’s the maximum load that you can sit on with it. How will it perform if you lean back really

fast. So we can take different techniques and apply them to shark skeletons to effectively run shark jaws through crash test simulations in order to understand how they can perform in different situations and how the performance has changed over evolutionary history.”

Sharks are vital for the marine ecosystem, according to Huber. When there are too many of a certain species, it is important for there to be predators like sharks to keep population sizes in check. Humans kill an estimated 100 million sharks a year, according to the journal Marine Policy. The biggest threats humans pose to sharks are catching them in fishing nets and hunting them for assets like fins. Shark populations are being depleted faster than they can reproduce, according to The Guardian.

Four students do research with Huber in his lab in the Science Annex. Haley Amplo, a senior marine biology major, does research on hammerhead sharks, specifically their cephalofoils, otherwise known as their hammer-shaped heads. She stressed the

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importance of sharks to the environment.

than people give them credit for.

“Sharks are apex predators in the marine environment,” Amplo said. “The marine environment behaves almost opposite of our terrestrial environment. Instead of there being fewer apex predators and a lot of their prey, in the marine environment, a healthy one shows a lot of apex predators and very few prey.”

“A lot of people think of sharks as these mindless eating machines,” Huber said. “But you could have painted all of these horn sharks the exact same color so they didn’t have any identifying marks and I could have in minutes told you exactly who was who based upon little behavioral quirks. When you’d walk into the room, they wanted you to pet them. They wanted physical interaction. There was one of them that if I didn’t pet it it would spit water out at me.”

Huber said that people have a lot of misconceptions about sharks. One is that they are out to attack humans, which Huber says is not true. Most types of sharks are under three feet long and live in remote areas of the ocean where humans would not come in contact with them. The types that are known for attacking humans, such as great white sharks, just happen to live in close proximity with recreational spots of humans. Another misconception is that they don’t exhibit many other behaviors besides eating and attacking. Huber worked closely with horn sharks, his favorite type of shark, in graduate school and he said that sharks have a lot more behavior

Kevin Travis, a senior marine biology major, does research on cookiecutter sharks and their feeding mechanisms. He said that shark research is important to the ocean’s conservation.

“It’s necessary because it’s the last frontier that hasn’t been depleted,” Travis said. “Our forests have been depleted but the oceans are relatively healthy and they interconnect.

It’s all connected. If fish die, everything else is going to fall with it.”

Content Creation At its finest

By Micaela Figueroa

C

ontent creation is what David Sams, a senior new media production major and film minor, describes as his passion and what he came to UT to study. He has always had a love of video games and films and gained an appreciation for the making of such content, which resulted in him winning the Student of the Year award for his major.

“The moment where I realized that I could possibly do this for the rest of my life was because of a YouTube video I saw in high school,” Sams said.

He recalled the first time he was made

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aware that digital media could make him money in the future.

using “freeware,” free software, to start his new, exciting journey.

It was a hot summer day in 2011 in Westborough, Massachusetts, where he was sitting in his room scrolling through YouTube. David happened upon a vlog (video blog), by a video production company Apprentice A, by the name of “Harry Potter and The Vlog of Azkaban (Huggies, Waterfalls, and Bobby Blaze).” This video sparked something within David to pursue a career in video production. He looked up to the creator of the Apprentice A production company, Corey Vidal. He then started

Since this spark of interest occurred, David’s brother, Matthew, surprised him with several Adobe applications on his 17th birthday in 2012. This package included downloadable disks containing software used to create creative content right from his computer. David mainly used Adobe Premiere and Adobe Photoshop to help enhance his image and video quality, and said that Adobe was a step up from the free software he had used previously.

love of content creation into action.

“David always made little stop motion movies when he was little, with his action figures and legos,” said Julia Sams, David’s’ mother. She knew at a young age David would go on to bigger and better things in this field.

“He was super creative with pictures and images,” Julia said. She remembers that her husband would teach David and his other siblings how to work on a computer and code websites.

Julia even recalled when the family would get together for game night and David would take it upon himself to enforce new rules for the games — rules he made up. She says that David never really stated to his family that he wanted to be a creative content developer, to which David responded, “I didn’t really say it, I just did it.”

According to David’s girlfriend Kamakshi Dadhwal, a junior psychology and philosophy double major at UT, David uses his knowledge of technology and content creation for good.“Technology is not nice to me, but he is so helpful to me and many others,” Dadhwal said.

David not only is a full time student, but he also works at the cass lab as a lab tech assistant and a resident assistant (RA) on the sixth floor of Straz Hall.

Dadhwal was often told that David would stay late at his job in the Cass Annex to assist with several students needing his guidance to complete assignments from those students’ classes. Students were very THE MINARET | PAGE 10

appreciative of David’s willingness to use his free time to help them with things they were struggling with, but came so naturally to David.

“He tried to teach me Photoshop, so I could improve my creative content,” Dadhwal said. “That didn’t work out very well.”

As an RA, David uses his skills to construct his very creative and massive door tags involving famous movie scenes and stretching all the way back to his infatuation with the Lego franchise. He also made the colorful and eye catching flyer for the Straz building wide carnival program.

“He is very technology creative; he knows the background information and knows what is aesthetically pleasing,” Dadhwal said.

His residents enjoy his dedication to making his floor look and feel lively and his dedication to informing them with his bulletin board filled with self-made posters that includes helpful information and emergency UT phone numbers.

David’s family and friends were not the only ones to see his many accomplishments; the faculty members within the art, communication, information and technology management, music, and writing departments thought his academic work has really made a lasting impression.

In the Spring 2016 semester, faculty awarded David New Media Production Student of the Year at the Communication Department Awards Ceremony. Gregg Perkins,communication’s chair and associate professor at UT, honored David this award because of David’s dedication and strong academic standing above the

many other amazing students within the new media production major.

According to the UT website, “The [new media production] program focuses on designing and creating applications for interactive media, mobile platforms and the Internet for both commercial and artistic intent. NMP (New Media Production) studies the associations between these areas in the context of academic scholarship, aesthetic exploration and technical research.” Those faculty members voting who received this award felt as though David exemplified these characteristics and represented the department well.

David knew his family was going to move from Westborough, Massachusetts to Florida at some point during his time at college, so he looked into UT and happened upon the new media production major.

“I liked [new media productions] because it was broad and really had everything I liked; art, technology, film, writing and music,” David said. “I applied and accepted to go to UT before even visiting the school, I just knew it was right for me.”

David has been very thankful for his time at the UT. Although he is graduating this December, he will never forget the faculty members who have taught him through his time at UT and helped him build his portfolio. “I still don’t know what I want to do with my life,” David said. “But in this field I am constantly learning about new things I can do with my future career.”

Winter Session Earn Three Credits in Three Weeks This winter break, consider taking online courses at the University of South Florida.

Students who are currently enrolled at another Florida public college or university—known as transient students—are welcome to apply for accelerated Winter Session courses and transfer credit you earn back to your home university. No prerequisites are required, and all majors are accepted.

CATCH UP, GET AHEAD: • Get one step closer to graduation • Reduce your course load for the spring semester • Stay on track to graduate • Complete an elective or required course • Learn anytime, anywhere with fully online courses SESSION DATES: Dec. 12, 2016–Jan. 4, 2017

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Deadline: Dec. 12, 2016

AD-Tech:

A New Era of Marketing

By Roberto Abedrabbo Our phones have internet access, we can stream movies at the comfort of our homes and videoconferences can be on-the-go. Indeed, the rate at which technology has grown over the past decade has made our daily lives easier, faster, and most importantly, connected.

We have reached a point where anything we want can be researched, found or bought from our phones.

One of the biggest impacts that technology has made over our society is how it has commoditized intelligence as a whole. Don’t remember who the 21st U.S. president was? Get your phone and Google it. What is 1523? Use the scientific calculator in your phone. Don’t know how to get to your friend’s party? Use Google Maps. Haven’t seen your parents’ faces in a while? Skype them. Overall,

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technology has turned our society into a “phone-first” market, where almost any piece of information can be gathered from our phones, as well as many major activities that were previously only available to be made in our computers, or weren’t even available at all.

However, these technological changes have had a major toll on advertising.

Marketing a product or service through commonly-used channels is no longer as effective, and marketers now have a need to be extremely innovation-oriented in order to meet their goals and objectives through their ads.

Do you remember any of those coupons that you received in the mail last week?

Can you remember any of the ads while watching the TV shows you recorded?

Let me guess, you probably fastforwarded all of them. Advertising now, more than ever before, has become an interruption to our daily lives, mainly because we are living in a world where data can be easily and rapidly accessed, and any type of interruption will automatically upset us, which naturally will make us disregard it.

“This is where highly targeted integrated marketing strategies are useful to both advertisers and consumers,” said marketing professor Gary Beemer. “[Smartphones] allow marketers to send highly relevant and compelling content to targeted and receptive consumers in the channels that they choose to frequent.”

Marketers now have the responsibility to acquire the single most valuable asset

that we need from our consumers and clients: their attention. The only way to get this is by entering the channels that are most commonly used nowadays, which are mostly digital (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat).

You can no longer excuse yourself because you don’t understand how social media works, and therefore, you are not going to take the time and money to learn how to use them. If there is one factor that will always remain consistent in the marketplace, it is change. If firms keep utilizing old communication channels where audiences are nearly obsolete, they will fail.

Technology has brought great accessibility for consumers to find businesses and reach out to them, but now more than ever, businesses need to provide greater value to their current and potential clients in order to acquire their attention and lead them into doing business with them.

“Building relationships with customers lets them know that you are more than just another product, and that you care about them and their specific needs,” Beemer said. “Strong relationships lead to Brand Loyalty, which is critically important to successful customer retention and long-term profitability.

Creating improved or new products is the essential last step as innovation continues to delight customers by meeting or exceeding their changing expectations, while keeping your company one or more steps ahead of competitors.”

eTHICAL I

t’s scary to think that at any given moment during the day our identities can be taken from us.

Although hacking occurs on a daily basis, there is a lot of positive hacking going on as well. Many government and security agencies are trained to hack in order to gain information or benefit society in a positive fashion.

Cyber security is a crucial part of technology, because without these people protecting us, who knows what kind of damage could be done.

Director of cybersecurity programs Dr. Kenneth Knapp teaches a course at UT called Ethical Hacking. This

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hACKING

course is an ethical hacking course, and allows students to learn how to hack safely and properly.

Website servers and databases are just a couple of examples of hacking that the students condone in the course.

Most students who take this class are trying to earn an undergraduate degree in cyber security.

“The goal of my class is to cover the overall ‘ethical hacking’ methodology,” Knapp said. “It gives students the skills and knowledge on how to conduct ‘penetration testing’ in an ethical manner.”

BY JOHN FELTMAN

Knapp earned a Ph.D. at Auburn University, and is an associate professor as well as an Information and Technology management director.

He took the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) exam in order to be registered as eligible to teach this course. To prepare for this exam, he took online courses because he realized how important it is for his students to learn the type of hacking skills in the course.

“Students who know this material will have confidence and technical awareness,” Knapp said. “It’s very beneficial even if a cyber security student does not work directly in

penetration testing or hacking after they graduate.”

Knapp also makes it clear to his students how important it is to follow the ethical hacking guidelines; meaning to never do anything illegal or scan or hack into a system without permission. Every class has endless possibilities with the hacking that students perform.

“We typically begin each two hour class with 30 minutes of discussion and then spend the rest of the class working with Kali Linux or other Windows tools directly on the lab computers,” Knapp said.

The cyber security major students in Knapp’s class all have experience with technology and computers. From day one, Knapp was impressed with his students.

“On the first day of class, we used a tool called Metasploit to hack into a server and each student successfully did this,” Knapp said.

The software used in ITM 480 are programs like Microsoft Windows and Kali Linux operating systems.These types of programs are specialized for hacking use, and makes hacking life easier for students. Students also use special computer applications such as Nmap, Wireshark, and Metaspoloit.

This might be foreign to students

who aren’t quite tech savvy, but even students who are advanced users of technology learn something everyday in this course.

“It takes time and exposure,” said senior cyber security major Benny Calhoun. “A lot of tools we use come pre-programmed in form of scripts that perform a set of task and outputs information.”

Calhoun is taking this course because he is interested in the employment opportunities that are affiliated with completing the CEH exam. He also says he has an interest in this career field, and this course gives him the core knowledge in order to become a network penetration tester.

But what really is hacking? When someone says they are “hacking into something” it could mean something as simple as gaining access without permission, or taking over a website or database. Hacking is a difficult process, and many people can still feel unsafe when their personal information is online. But, this isn’t the case at all when it comes to ITM 480.

“Controlled chaos, as a safety precaution we are limited to a virtual environment, so more often than not to no access to public website,” Calhoun said. “But we do have virtual targets in the lab that simulate the

real thing.

Again, a lot of the tools that come pre-programmed are capable of taking down websites and gaining access to information.”

Calhoun says the course isn’t necessarily difficult, but he said that they’re a lot of long, tedious steps when it comes to hacking. The technology world wouldn’t be safe if it wasn’t for cyber security, and ethical hacking.

Cyber security majors are now required to take this class as part of their major. Students can not only learn a lot in this class, but it can put them at good standing when it comes to finding a job after obtaining a degree, because this gives them a set of skills that employers are looking for.

Master

By Amanda Franz

Y

ou’re a struggling novel writer.

You work long hours trying to develop characters and make sure your plot follows the right path without leaving any major holes. You feel the cloud of writer’s block seep into your room, and you realize it’s time for a break. You lie down and bed and slowly drift off, trying to forget all the things you still have left to do. Regardless, you dream you’re sitting at your desk, your papers are blank and your pen seems to be out of ink. You start to think about the greats, the writers you look up to, and the ones that inspire you the most. A name comes to mind: James Patterson, the author of 19

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consecutive number-one New York Times best sellers. Within an instant he’s sitting with you, talking you through everything.

You suddenly wake up, feeling rested and silently wishing James had really been there to help you. Well as they say, dreams do come true.

donations and the over 30,000 people enrolled in the $90 courses. I myself will be taking lessons from the Academy Award winning actor Kevin Spacey, thanks to my loving boyfriend, and let’s just say there were some tears when I received this unique gift.

Masterclass, an online specialized lesson system launched in May of last year, gives all of us average Joes and Janes the chance to cyber study under the pros. Co-founded by friends Aaron Rasmussen and David Rogier, Masterclass has raised $15 million for the online classes as of February of this year. This is made up from teacher

As of now, there are eight masterclasses available online. Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman teach acting (separately), James Patterson teaches writing, Serena Williams teaches tennis, Werner Herzog teaches filmmaking, Aaron Sorkin teaches screenwriting, Christina Aguilera teaches singing, and Usher teaches the

Class art of performance. If those classes aren’t interesting enough, there are more classes coming soon, including Reba McEntire teaching country music and Annie Leibovitz teaching photography. Masterclass is set up in a way where there are several different ways you can become involved in the class.

These are like normal classes in a school, but taught by someone you idolize. Each student has access to printable resources including a workbook and follow along sheets for each lesson. The courses vary in length, ranging from 10 to 35 classes, depending on how the sections are broken down. Classes are made up of a video lesson, a downloadable follow along pdf, and a lesson discussion section. In just the Kevin Spacey class alone, I have 2,783 classmates registered on Facebook, so don’t ever think that you’re going through this alone. When someone posts a questions to the page, everyone enrolled gets a notification and that person is guaranteed to get multiple responses. Just in the time that I started writing this article, 134 new comments have been added to the lesson discussion section for the introduction class.

“If they offered something beneficial to me I would totally take it,” said Matt Ferraro, UT sophomore cybersecurity major. “I think it’s smart to have the best in the business teaching what they know best.”

Ferraro went on to say that he likes the overall idea and if Masterclass keeps expanding the way it is now, he’s sure an instructor he idolizes will join in soon.

“It would be cool to have office hours with Kanye, maybe he could teach philosophy

since Usher is already teaching performance.”

On your class page you can see how many contributions and comments you’ve made to the course and where to find them.

Immediately after signing up you will get an email from the community manager for the specific course you joined. Here they will advise you to join the student group on Facebook, where you can connect with people taking the course and participate in student check-ins.

You will have your own Masterclass profile, which is like a social network website where people can look at your progress and classes. Here you can edit your picture, your name, and your description or biography line. Listed below your name is the amount of classes you’ve started, the amount of assignments you’ve started, and the amount of comments you’ve left. On the bottom of the page is a section where you can leave a review of the class, between one to five stars, and leave a written review of what you thought.

Longtime member Noey Torres is an expert on Masterclass, considering he is enrolled in Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Werner Herzog, Aaron Sorkin, and James Patterson’s classes.

“I started with Dustin Hoffman’s acting Masterclass,” Torres said. “I bought it in hopes of getting an actor’s perspective on character development but his views on artistic thinking in general really took me to a whole other level in my own work. I don’t mind the workbook and other things but what I really like is interacting with other artists. I live in a town where you either

start your own import/export business or get into law enforcement if you want to get ahead. Masterclass has allowed me to interact with so many like-minded people.

It’s been an experience.”

The coolest part of these classes is something normal college students take for granted. Normally when we hear a teacher talk about their office hours, we zone out unless this somehow involves extra credit or mandatory individual meetings. How would you feel about office hours if your teacher was Usher? At the bottom of your class page is a link to office hours with your celebrity teacher. Here you can submit a question via writing, webcam, or uploaded video. If your question peaks the interest of your teacher, they will personally take the time to answer. For example, a young man named Craig Hyde-Smith left a twenty second video question in office hours and Kevin Spacey replied to him with a two minute video answer.

With all of these resources available, the surprisingly low price, the ability to gift it to your friends and family, and the spectacle of the teachers, I’m surprised there aren’t more people enrolled. The best part: you have lifetime access to all the elements of your Masterclass.

4Student Reasons Every Should Have a Blog

By Daina Stanley

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nly 49 percent of college graduates from a 4-year college landed a full-time job right after graduation in 2014, according to careerbuilder. com. That’s about a 50-50 chance that a college student will find employment. That’s not a number I’d gamble on. However, there is a way for all college students — no matter which major — to boost their resume and land a job, or at least make up the income they may not be getting. It’s as easy as starting a blog.

O

1.Blogs

require little to no start-up Registering a domain on one of the top web hosting sites, GoDaddy, costs less than 20 bucks a year to maintain. That’s one less Starbucks drink a week for one month. For only $20 a month you can create a website like Wix, Squarespace or Wordpress that aligns with your topic and is aesthetically appealing. If you’re on a starving college student budget, you can use sites such as Weebly, Blogger, and Tumblr for free. Reese Evans, Founder of Yes Supply Co., invested in her domain a year ago. Her results are impressive. “I remember having to think about if investing that money to pay for my domain would pay off, since I didn’t know where it would take me,” Evans said. “I’m glad I took the plunge. A little over a year later, my community is over 20,000 women.

I have customers in every continent, and I’m living out my dream.”

2. Being a blog

writer establishes your credibility Credibility equals trust. If you earn a potential employer’s trust, they are going to be much more comfortable with you executing the work needed. “When you are a blogger, you are the expert,” said Deonna Monique, CEO of Boho Exotic Studio. “You are the leader. Let’s say you start a blog on hairstyles. When you blog, people go to you for all the new, cool trends for hairstyles.

You become the leader of your craft when you know more and have more content.”

Eventually, with all of the research and the knowledge that you have gained, you will become an expert in your field.

3. It’s an

opportunity to beef up your resume If you are lacking experience on your resume, then a blog may be able to fill the void. This shows that you have expertise in your field, you have discipline and you are highly dedicated to the profession.

According to The National Association of Colleges and Employers, 70.2 percent of employers look for written communication skills for new hires, 80.1 percent of employers look for leadership as a skill on resumes, and 68.9 percent look for strong work ethic as a priority in the hiring

process. “Having my own brand and channel has allowed me to brand myself and create a platform of my ideas and creations, which is great for hiring companies to review,” said Casey Budd, UT alumni and creator of The Case Face. She started her Youtube channel three years ago. All of these crucial attributes are learned and demonstrated through maintaining a blog.

4. A blog builds your Rolodex

We all know the phrase “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Like any form of social media, blogging connects people.

This means the readers that your blog attracts are interested in your topic. If your goal is to be a fashion merchandiser, this could potentially put you in contact with fashion industry professionals. If you plan on going to dental school, one of your readers could be a student in a program you are interested in. There are an endless amount of scenarios that can be inserted here. The bottom line is blogging connects you with people — and people hire people.

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GADGETS & GIZMOS

PG. 21-30

noah’s arc

BY ELENA DE ALFREDO

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T

he alarm rings. It is 8 a.m. on a Tuesday: time for Jenny Horvatinovic to wake up. Horvatinovic is a senior guard basketball player at UT, and she is relentless on her daily work routine to improve her game. Every morning, she prepares a bowl of milk with cereal for breakfast, gets dressed and walks to the gym. Once there, Horvatinovic goes through her individual workout before the team arrives for practice at 10 a.m.

However, Horvatinovic is not by herself. There is somebody who never leaves the gym and is always on time. Her name is Noah, but she is not a person. Noah is a new technological tool who is always ready to help players like Horvatinovic, to improve their shooting abilities.

“It is extremely important to work on your shot because it is all muscle memory and repetition,” Horvatinovic said. “I try to work on it from five to six times a week if possible.”

In basketball, shooting is one of the most important skills that a player needs in order to succeed. Shooting is an art, and it takes a lot of repetition, time and commitment in order to improve it.

Noah is a machine developed in 1993 by a trio of friends from Silicon Valley who loved basketball. Alan Marty, Ridge McGhee and Tom Edwards were also science experts. Marty, is a physicist, McGhee has extensive knowledge in the computer field and Edwards is a rocket scientist.

The primary purpose of these scientific experts was to help their daughters become better shooters. Because of the successful results, this invention became a revolutionary shooting machine.

Noah measures the arc and depth of every shot taken and gives instant feedback. It allows the players to instantly correct their shots and build muscle memory, which helps them increase their confidence.

Noah verbally says a number, which refers to the shooting arc, after every shot is taken. Experts have shown that the arc of the shooter should be in between 42 and 48 degrees. So, when the

player shoots and the machine gives them an instant number of the angle of the arc, the shooter already knows if they should keep shooting the same way), or if they should have more arc on the shoot.

The official Noah basketball website (www.noahbasketball.com) explains that the shooting percentages in basketball have been regularly flat and even declining from professional to amateur levels. The website provides an alarming example from the NBA, where it says that the average free throw shooting percentage has been constant at about 74 percent since 1958.

Noah has been used for everything from NBA teams, such as the Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks, to college and high school programs.

UT’s women’s basketball is one of the programs that counts on this machine and uses it at practices on a daily basis. UT women’s basketball head coach Tom Jessee believes in statistics as an extremely important part of the game. Hhe decided to purchase this machine so the players could develop their shooting percentages by educating their technique.

Noah has been available to the team for two seasons and has helped players improve their release points when shooting and therefore, their percentages.

This machine could be important in youth basketball because it allows kids to learn the techniques correctly, so there is no need to fight against the lack of fundamentals or technique, Jessee said.

Senior forward Teresa Kucera is a German native and she had never been able to work with this kind of device until she transferred to UT last year. Women’s basketball clubs in Germany and even at her previous school Seton Hall in New Jersey, did not use this highly technological engine.

“Noah has really helped me to become more comfortable with

my shot,” Kucera said. “I work with it as much as I can and I definitely see a big improvement comparing myself to the years before.”

Kucera is not the only one who has been benefited from Noah’s services. Faith Sanders is a junior guard transfer from Northern Kentucky University, has been emphasizing her shooting and has started to feel improvement after using Noah this past month.

“When I came here, the Noah machine being accessible was a very good improvement from my last school,” Sanders said. “I didn’t know how to fix the flatness of my shot and thanks to this machine now it’s like my brain automatically tells me how to do it.”

The women’s basketball team takes pride in keeping up with

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this equipment to give the players resources to be successful.

“I highly recommend it because combining Noah with the shooting gun you get the arc angle and the repetition,” Jessee said. “I waited for years trying to get it because it is a piece of equipment that will help players to be better at a skill.”

Sorry, little pink iPhone. it's time for a

Break Up

By Faith Ponti

I

have a confession: I am in a relationship with my cell phone, and we’re getting entirely too serious. It’s slightly obsessive. I can’t keep my hands, eyes, or mind off of my phone. It walks me to class, works out with me and sleeps right by my side. When it’s not with me, I feel naked.

Getting attention from my phone makes me feel incredibly validated and content. But when it barely buzzes all day, I get an overwhelming sense of loneliness and unease, wondering whether or not it’s because of some inherent, fundamental flaw within me. I’ve tried to take breaks from it — tried leaving it at home, turning it off for the day, or sleeping without it next to me — but the separation anxiety constantly proves to be too strong and I always find it back in my pocket and on my mind.

I have, in essence, given my phone both the capability and the right to take ownership of a majority of my everyday life. I open notifications, text back and check updates immediately. I have no chill when it comes to opening up a Snapchat.

When my notifications center on Facebook turns red, I waste no time in seeing who has most recently admired — or roasted — my newest shared post.

After a new Instagram post, I wait for my lock screen to flood with notifications. I answer phone calls and text messages even when I’m occupied with something far more pressing.

Because of this unhealthy (excuse me as I selfdiagnose myself) obsession, I instantly gratify, expecting the same in return and measuring a portion of my worth on the amount of times my iPhone buzzes per day.

Hopefully, you’re thinking the same thing I am — how pathetic. The world is so massive, Florida is so beautiful and the people I

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am surrounded by are so interesting and wonderful. So why am I spending so much time and energy on a piece of metal that tells me how many people think I’m pretty or funny? Since when did the amazing technology that allows me to contact long-distance loved ones more quickly and easily become a mindcontrolling black hole of read receipts and pinned photos of foreign places that I’ve already decided I’m too lazy to ever see with my own eyes? Why has it become more important for me to respond to a text or snap than it is to pay attention in the science class that I am currently on brink of failing? Why am I like this?

Or maybe the question should be, why are we like this? I am not the only college student who feels this way. However, I don’t think I’m making a stretch if I say that many of us are likely a little too attached to those little demon computers in our pockets. According to an article titled “Relations between college students’ cell phone use during class and grades” in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, in 2014 the average college student spent between five and nine hours — 95 minutes texting and 95 minutes using social media — on their cell phone per day.

Some of us are better than others. In fact, I’ve learned to both admire and envy those in my group of friends who are “terrible” texters. It means their real-life, actual daily lives are more interesting and time-consuming than whatever is happening in cyberspace, and I think that’s pretty rad. I wish I could do the same.

Recently, I’ve decided that maybe I can — and should — do the same. I’ve been making little efforts to try to wean myself off of my phone little by little. For example, though I use my phone as an alarm and therefore need it to be

next to my bed (god forbid I miss my 8:30 a.m. science lab), I’ve been using airplane mode at night so that I don’t wake up to texts or other notifications while I’m asleep. Also, though somewhat unsuccessfully, I’ve been trying to keep my phone in my backpack throughout the entirety of my lecture classes so as to avoid becoming engrossed in Facebook stalking my ex-bae’s new bae instead of learning.

I also keep my phone across the room while relaxing or meditating so that my brain and heart can take real, long breaks from the chaos that is social media. I’ve been trying to avoid having largely emotionally based or heated conversations over text so that a read receipt or long-delayed response doesn’t send me into as much of a frenzy. Finally, each week, I try to spend some phone-free time out in nature so that I can reconnect to what I find to be true, uninterrupted beauty and peace.

I am nowhere near close to where I’d like to be in regard to detaching my thoughts and emotions from my phone. However, I’d like to believe that by acknowledging this as a problem—maybe one that is experienced by a lot of people—that I’m on the path toward discovering peace and becoming more fascinated with my real, human life than I am with texts or likes or— dare I say it —memes. We are so incredibly privileged to live in a time that allows us to communicate with people in every niche of the world, and for that I am incredibly grateful.

However, I’d like my fascination with technology to peak at gratitude. As an aspiring awesome human being, I believe that it’s time for this obsessive relationship to end. I am an independent woman, and I’m sorry little pink iPhone, but I think it’s time for a break up.

Cell-you later

By Jill Conway

W

ould you rather have a phone that could explode at any minute, or never be able to plug your headphones in again? For Apple and Android users looking for new phones, that question isn’t hypothetical.

When Samsung released the Galaxy Note 7 on Aug. 19, they were looking to make a large profit off of the device’s waterproof feature.

Users would no longer need bulky, expensive cases to protect their phones from an accidental dip in the toilet. However, Samsung’s plan to make the first waterproof phone backfired thanks to water’s opposite element — fire. A flaw in the lithium battery caused the phones to overheat and ignite, according to NPR. Lithium batteries have a reputation of catching fire because they are highly flammable and the smallest puncture can cause the lithium to heat up and catch fire. Samsung explained the problem with the Note 7 being that if pressure was placed on the plates in the battery, it brought the positive and negative poles into contact, heating the lithium and allowing it to catch fire, according to CBS. When the phones started to cause fires, Samsung released a recall that was asking its customers to bring back their Galaxy Note 7’s and to either exchange them for another phone or request a refund.

vs.

“Since the affected devices can overheat and pose a safety risk, we are asking consumers with a Galaxy Note 7 to power it down and contact the carrier or retail outlet where they purchased their device,” the message read.

Because of the recall, Samsung is reporting that overall they will lose $6 billion after the debacle is all cleared up.

Junior political science major Wyatt Floyd recently purchased the iPhone 7 after seeing what happened with the Note 7.

“I think that they’re going to have something totally new with their camera or something to keep heavy social media users interested, which is who I believe to be the vast majority of people who rush out to get new phones,” Floyd said.

Apple came out with the iPhone 7 about a month later, in September, but their efforts to make something new and improved had a similar backlash.

The new iPhone 7 does not have a headphone audio jack, but it is water resistant and it has the best battery life of any iPhone so far.

Junior secondary education major Kevin Cadigan, who just got the iPhone 7, said he hasn’t noticed not having a headphone jack as much as he thought he would.

“The battery life isn’t that much better than the one on my iPhone 5s, to be honest,” Cadigan noted. “It lasts the whole day if I charge it all night but I feel like all iPhones have done that when you first get them. What would really impress me would be seeing that last.”

Floyd, who has had the phone for about two weeks, disagrees.

“The battery life is honestly a lot more reliable,” Floyd said. “I have had iPhones in the past that die on 20 percent battery life, but this one will last up to 30 minutes on one percent.”

He talked more about the LTE and the improvements Apple made on its speed and camera, adding that he has no regrets about purchasing the iPhone 7.

When it comes to the new camera, Cadigan agrees it’s worth the upgrade.

“I notice a difference mostly in the pictures that I take at night, whether flash is on or off, I’m getting clear pictures with crisp focus,” Cadigan said. “No more of those fuzzy pictures of the moon.”

This phone will self-destruct Can you hear in 3...2...1... me now?

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ROBOCOPP

The world’s Tiniest SOS Alarm

By Christian Pranzo

H

ave you ever wanted pocketsized security that can be as strong as a siren? No, this isn’t another app. Prevention from danger in your pocket is made possible with ROBOCOPP, the world’s smallest SOS alarm. Based out of San Francisco and Oakland, California, ROBOCOPP produces a handheld device that delivers either a 120 or 130-decibel (dB) alarm to ward off potential dangers.

“All you do is pull the pin and it releases a startling alarm that can get you out of a bad situation,” explains U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte in a video on the company’s website.

CEO Sam Mansen wanted a product to make his younger sister safer on her college campus.

“Sam didn’t want her using pepper spray because he wanted her to use something non-violent and he didn’t want her using something that could be used against her,” said Jill Turner, the public relations director for ROBOCOPP. Mansen originally came up with the idea of ROBOCOPP two years ago and it has been growing ever since.

ROBOCOPP is available in three different models: the Sound Grenade, Sound Grenade+ and the ROBORanger. Each brings different qualities that make each model unique in their own way. These products are water-resistant, TSA-approved and contain a CR1632 battery that last 30

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minutes of total alarm time or one year, whichever comes first, according robocopp. com. The batteries are sealed for the protection against water and to make the device childproof. The models are reusable and the company hand-tests every single product before it is released to the public.

The Sound Grenade is the ultra compact unit made for city use, according to robocopp.com. It fits in the palm of your hand and is designed to latch onto key chains. With its 120dB alarm, it is engineered for a city environment.

According to Purdue University’s chemistry department, it emits a painful sound equivalent to a thunderclap or the sound of a chainsaw.

The Sound Grenade+, on the other hand, was created for an outdoor environment.

With its “ultra rugged” exterior and 130dB alarm, the Sound Grenade+ could be used to ward off potential dangers one could be faced when in the mountains, forest, etc. Depending on the circumstances, the extra decibels could be needed if there is not anyone nearby to hear the alarm.

According to Purdue University’s chemistry department, 130dB is equivalent to a “military jet aircraft take-off from aircraft carrier with afterburner at 50 feet.”

The ROBORanger is a combination of the Sound Grenade and Sound Grenade+.

According to Turner, the ROBORanger is the first of its kind in terms of a pocket size alarm, being able to automatically innitiate

a 911 response.

“I think this alarm is a good idea, especially for short girls like me,” said freshman international business major Alexa Nowak.

“I am 5’1 and would definitely not be able to defend myself if I ever got into a bad situation. The most I could do is try to fight back and scream, but they could easily hold my mouth shut, which makes the alarm very useful.”

“The ROBORanger can send a location in seconds,” Turner said. “Two or three years ago, this wasn’t possible.”

The ROBORanger is equipped with a pre-installed and pre-activated SIM card in order for the authorities to track the location of the device and send the needed assistance. The ROBORanger isn’t out yet but can be pre-ordered to ship in 2017, according to Turner.

“I would be a user of this product keeping it in my backpack or in my pocket if I was walking in the city,” said Austin Vutech, a sophomore and finance major at the University of Tampa. “I feel like woman would have a need for this more than men due to the fact sexual assault and rape is a bigger risk for them. If I heard an alarm, I would definitely investigate and take action if need be.”

Today, ROBOCOPP can be seen in over 100 college campuses and has been sold to people in over 27 countries around the world, according to Turner.

What’s app-ening

PG. 31-43

Sh tty Apps

By Vincent Perstad

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A

dmit it: you look at your phone when you’re on the toilet. It’s okay, you’re not alone, but you know what might make that experience even better? Some apps to customize your pooping experience. iFart and Places I’ve Pooped have this market cornered. All you have to type into the search window in the App Store is “Places” or “iF” and the iPhone will auto fill the rest for you. See? I told you you’re not alone.

Places I’ve Pooped allows users to not only track the areas they’ve done the deed, but also share it with friends so they can potentially seal the deal in the exact same place. The app has over 1.2 million Apple users alone, and has recently been the top entertainment app for both Android and iPhone users.

“The fact that you can actually share the location where you have pooped is quite hilarious,” said freshman marketing major and Places I’ve Pooped user Brett Saunders. “I can’t see it as very useful, but definitely entertaining.”

Places I’ve Pooped gives you the chance to make friends in a whole new way.

When you share the place that you’ve emptied yourself, people can follow you like any other social media website.

If sharing where you’ve pooped isn’t childish enough, then the iFart app can perhaps do justice in your search for your premature self. The app features over hundreds of different fart styles.

The farts range from names like “Laundry Day” to “Jack The Ripper.”

If that gets too boring for you then why don’t you just record, share, and name your own farts? Yep, you can do that too.

The iFart also comes with different categories that allow users to take advantage of varieties of farts, including one with song remixes that are of course renamed to succumb to farts—and that is not the end. Other categories are movies, shark toppers, presidential farts, Fart Wars, bands, food, and celebrities.

The six current categories for the iFart app are Security Fart, I’m Feeling Lucky, Sneak Attack, Record-A-Fart, Fart Now, and even Social Fart. The Social Fart category allows users to share farts with each other via either the app itself or by other social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.

“The fact that there are apps out there that aren’t serious in at all and are the stupidest things possible, is what makes it so appealing,” Saunders said.

Both iFart and Places I’ve Pooped have five stars on the App Store rating charts and their continued rise could indeed prove to be fun for people above the age of nine, which is the minimum age limits for these apps. iFart hit number one on the iTunes app store entertainment category in 2008 and has been an all-time Top 20 app since, with features appearing on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Today Show, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, MSNBC.com, along with dozens of other organizations and news networks.

Even if you don’t care about making friends in smelly atmospheres, the security feature may change your mind.

Caron’s favorite, ‘security mode’, allows him to enter whatever fart the app has to offer and set it as a security setting so that whenever anyone picks up his phone, the phone will sense that someone is moving it and they will get a nasty alarm.

“It is a really funny way of either securing your phone or just playing pranks on people,” Caron said.

Do you Even

LIFTSYNC?

BY GABE COHN

O

ver the past two years, UT has transformed into one of Tampa’s go-to hotspots with the addition of the Innovation and Collaboration building and the new fitness center. The Innovation and Collaboration building has put the entrepreneurship major and other business majors at the forefront with resources and space for these students to be inventive.

The fitness center, on the other hand, has generated newfound interest in health and has also given the university a chance to be at the forefront of fitness technology advances. These buildings have revitalized UT’s campus and have given three students the chance to break through with a revolutionary fitness technology app that could change workout statistics as we know them.

A year ago, senior international business and marketing double major Mariner Cheney and senior mathematics and philosophy double major Patrick Schroeder met while playing basketball on UT’s campus.

Cheney, who is originally from Blue Hill, Maine, transferred to UT after his freshman year, and previously worked as a landscaper and a carpenter. Schroeder is from Buffalo, New York and previously

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attended the University of Buffalo before transferring to UT. In the past, he conducted protein research at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, worked as head of sales at BAKing Inc. in Buffalo, and participated as a U.S. student ambassador at the National Young Leader’s Conference.

After they met, they remained friends and decided to join UT’s Spartan Climbers organization because of their love for rock climbing. Upon joining the club, they met senior entrepreneurship major Matt Phillips, who soon became the third member of the LiftSync trio. Phillips is from the Tampa Bay area and was a collegiate basketball player at TAGG Academy (Tampa) before his career was cut short due to an injury. Before meeting Cheney and Schroeder, Phillips was also an intern at Skyway Towers.

The three became good friends through the club, and after a couple of months, came up with a concept that they thought could change the fitness technology industry: digitally tracking workouts and statistics hands-free.

“We all thought of the concept together,” Schroeder said. “The technology is pretty simple and uses

the same sort of technology that you can find in a phone. With aspirations to get more involved in business and a great idea in hand we decided to join the Startup Weekend competition to see where this idea could go.”

The concept and technology that the trio presented at Startup Weekend involves two wristbands, several on-weight sensors and a mobile application to keep track of all lifting stats for analysis.

The participant that uses the technology, whether it’s an athlete or an average gym-goer, wears a set of two wristbands, which sync with sensors that are on weights. These sensors track the essential aspects of workouts such as the weight lifted, and reps and sets completed. Besides the simple weight lifting statistics, the bands can also track more in-depth stats such as power, velocity and work. All of this information is logged, hands-free, into the LiftSync app and can be viewed during the workout or after by the athletes or coaches.

The application, which stores all of the analytics, is then used by coaches and trainers to create workout plans based on the individual’s stats. The coaches or trainers then can send notifications

to the athletes to make sure that they are on track or if they need to make an adjustment to their workout plan. Then they can each keep track of their progress over a select period of time.

That concept and application, which they named LiftSync, won them first prize at the Startup Weekend competition and has generated a ton of success at other startup competitions. LiftSync was voted the global winner of the Disruptors and Big Ideas track of the Global Startup Battle and also took first place in the Southeastern Entrepreneurship Conference’s startup competition, beating out 24 university teams from the Southeastern U.S. “The business competitions are more labor intensive than most would expect,”

Phillips said. “We usually write our pitches a week or two in advance and continue to shape it until the day of the competition.

We practice the pitches over and over until we’re finally happy with how it sounds.

There’s a lot of amazing startups in the area, especially at UT, so the competition is always strong. Past that, we simply try to ensure that we portray the business in a way that everyone can understand, while still showing the more intricate aspects of the company.”

The success that LiftSync has had through startup competitions has led to deals with several companies including Ark Applications LLC, a private equity firm, and PAR Inc., a software company. The trio is also working with an independent engineer to develop the hardware in the wristbands and in the weight sensors.

“Right now we have a prototype that is being scaled down and readied for mass production and our app will be done in a few months,” Cheney said. “We hope to have everything ready to go so we can release the application in February. For the future, we hope that we can grow the company into a multi-million-dollar company and keep it based out of Tampa.”

LiftSync continues to gain momentum as the release date for their app approaches and time will tell if their concept can put a stamp on the ever growing fitness technology industry.

The Emoji Takeover.

By Liz MacLean

H

eart eyes. Winky face. Poop. Emojis have become iconic since Apple added them to their keyboard in 2011, and now, over 1,600 emojis are available in the iPhone’s iOS 9.1. But emojis have taken a leap off the phone screen and can now be found smothering t-shirts in clothing stores and covering soda bottles in supermarkets.

When sophomore allied health major Allison Hoyos’ cousin Roberto Hoyos made an emoji pillow for his friend in 2007, Hoyos watched as this grew into a successful company called Throwboy, which claims to be the “original emoji pillow.” Soon, Throwboy pillows, which start at $19.99, were reaching customers across the US, and other companies emerged with similar designs. There are now hundreds of emoji pillows available in stores from Target to Amazon.

Hoyos sees people’s passion for emojis not just online, but also in her everyday life.

“My whole family, including myself, have purchased Roberto’s emoji pillows,” Hoyos said. “He sells the most popular emojis such as the kiss face, the heart eyes, the poop, and more. He also sells little pillow key chains as well, all including the same kind of emojis. I have the grin pillow.”

Advertisers from Pepsi, Schick, and Domino’s have caught onto the emoji craze and celebrities, companies, and even nonprofits are prospering from emoji popularity. Because of their popularity, emojis are being used to sell products, whether in advertisements or on the items themselves. Appboy, a mobile marketing automation that helps marketers use new technology to reach their customers, states that over the last 12 months, the number of campaigns using emojis has increased 777 percent and that emojis use has grown 20 percent each month in 2016.

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This past February, Pepsi started their “Say It With Pepsi” campaign and released their own line of emojis plastered on the sides of soda bottles. Featuring over 200 different yellow faces, these soda bottles allow customers to download the emoji set onto their phones and send them in texts, social media posts, and emails. Pepsi even collaborated with Pizza Hut to make a soda-pizza combo that caught the attention of every American’s stomach. If found on a Pepsi bottle, the rare pizza emoji grants the customer a free pizza from Pizza Hut.

exclusive taco emoji available).

Besides Pepsi, many other companies joined in on emoji-marketing, including Etsy, which features hundreds of clothing items related to emojis, like socks, sweatshirts, hats and jewelry. A simple “emoji” search on the website provides a huge variety of products consisting of emoji invitations, hair bows, cupcake toppers, and pins (with a new

“This is my only job because I am a 17-yearold student,” said Santiago, who is based in San Diego, CA. “And in the last year or so, the emojis have really been what has kept my shop going; they are by far the most popular thing I sell.”

According to Neil Patel, entrepreneur and marketer, emojis make up almost half of the

“I think that emojis are such a big craze because they’re a quick way to get a message across, which is important in a world so focused on social media that is instant and constantly changing,” said Camille Santiago, who has been making and selling t-shirts with emojis on them since 2014. Laughing-crying, alien head, and ghost emojis are all featured on the simple yet expressive shirts that start at $11.

comments on Snapchat and Instagram. “75 percent of male and 84 percent of female respondents believe emojis are a better way to express their emotions than words,” Patel said on his website. “So, they’re helpful in setting your brand’s tone of voice.”

Appboy found that emoji use on Apple’s iOS has grown by 662 percent within the last year.

Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian have released their own lines of emojis. The “Kimoji” app, which launched in December 2015, is available in the iTunes store for $1.99.

It’s now the number five entertainment app (the Ellen DeGeneres emoji app jumped ahead to number two, with the Moji Maker app being the number one paid Entertainment app).

Even nonprofits such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Dog Trust have started using this trend in communication. The WWF released 17 animal emojis on Twitter. Users can sign up to receive the emojis, and in turn, every time they tweet one, they are asked to donate 11 cents. At the end of the month, the WWF sends them a balance of how many emojis were tweeted, along with their donation.

The announcement tweet that contained the 17 emojis received over 34,000 retweets,

worldwide. This “cute-sells” tactic seemed to work on more than just Twitter, too.

Nan Shoenfelt produces and sells emoji leggings for $24 on Etsy.com. She is a math professor at a New Jersey college and produces leggings from her home during her free time. Shoenfelt began by making adult-sized leggings with the tongue-out emoji, the devil emoji, the heart emoji, and various others.

Her leggings were so successful that parents requested she produce children’s sizes, too.

“I think the emoji craze comes from the fact that people often don’t communicate in person so much anymore,” Shoenfelt said. “Most communication, especially between young people, is by texting. The emoji is a way to communicate without writing out the words.”

Dr. Jennifer Burton, marketing professor at UT, agrees that emojis are a way for people to communicate pictorially, rather than verbally.

“From a marketing perspective, [emojis] are taking off because of the convenience factor.

We’re obsessed with expressing ourselves — that’s a basic human need to connect with others; it’s hardwired into us,” Burton said.

Dr. Devin Lunt, a marketing professor at UT, points out that companies are trying to

connect with younger generations, as well as people who make use of new technology and social media.

“It’s something they’re comfortable with and they can identify with, and it’s part of their culture and their everyday lives,” Lunt said.

“It’s something they can really embrace.

The companies are making an effort to communicate in their way.”

Now marketers want to know if this emoji trend will fade out in a couple of months, just as the duckface, planking, and “Alex from Target” trends all have. Similar to Facebook, will emojis become another piece of technology that “‘old people” have ruined?

“I don’t see any reason why right now it wouldn’t continue to be effective, especially as organizations learn more about how to use it effectively,” Lunt said.

Etsy shop owners, emoji pillow buyers, and marketing professors agree that emojis aren’t going anywhere, for now. “I think it’s going to last a while because it’s communication; it’s self-expression,” Burton said. “These are fundamental human needs. Communication isn’t going anywhere, so I think they’re here to stay.”

Fuel your app-etite the best food and drink apps for college students

By Liz MacLean

F

ood: most college students have it on their mind almost 24/7. It’s a priority, especially during those late nights when all you crave is mac n’ cheese or buffalo wings. But munching on caf pizza every day or ordering UberEATS can get unhealthy and expensive. That’s why there are apps to spark your creativity in the kitchen, help you save money at the liquor store, and learn about the best, and least pricey, restaurants around. The best part is, the apps are all fit for a college budget — aka, they’re free.

FOURSQUARE

they can follow friends and foodie experts to see what establishments they suggest.

Foursquare Labs, Inc., the creator of the app, claims there are no reviews from businesses trying to promote themselves or long rants from unsatisfied customers.

With Foursquare, you can rate the places you’ve been to and which menu items you enjoyed, so the app can recommend other restaurants that would be a good fit for you. The app also lets you create a list of restaurants and bars in the area you want to visit. There are hundreds of tips from food aficionados about special menu items, wifi passwords, and even speakeasy entrances.

This app is great for finding nearby restaurants, complete with customer ratings and tips. Foursquare divides restaurants into breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee & tea, nightlife, and things to do. The app even keeps a history of places you’ve visited in case you want to go back or recommend them to a friend. Users have the ability to link the app to their Facebook or email so

When searching for a dinner place in Tampa, a list of restaurants with their closing times and average score on a ten-point scale appears. Several of the places on the Tampa dinner list include Boca, Mise en Place, Edison Food and Drink Lab, and Spain Restaurant and Toma Bar. Users can click on a map to see the different restaurant locations. You can also apply filters such as

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relevance, distance, rating, and price, which can be very useful if you’re trying to stay under-budget. The app will also let you know if the restaurant delivers, allows dogs, has happy hour, or is within walking distance.

MYFITNESSPAL For students who want to cut back on The Grille and SOHO Donuts, MyFitnessPal is an essential tool. The app lets you count calories by selecting the food you’ve eaten that day and in what quantities.

MyFitnessPal can even count how many steps you take and how many calories you burn, providing a free alternative to a Fitbit. You can save meals that you frequently eat, making it easier to count calories. The app will also take into account the exercise you input and subtract that from the total amount of calories you’ve consumed that day.

Hannah Elliott, a junior psychology and business double major, uses MyFitnessPal to

track the food she eats.

“I think it’s really useful,” Elliott said. “I have been using it for five months now and have lost 40 pounds, so it works. It keeps you honest about what you are eating, and it’s good to use to track your weight as well.”

One of the most convenient features of the app is that it lets you scan a food item’s barcode and it will tell you the nutritional value of it. This is especially useful when grocery shopping. The app is easy to learn and can connect with multiple other fitness apps, including Apple Health, Fitbit, Garmin, Runkeeper, Misfit, and others.

TASTEMADE Tastemade could be described as a cookbook on social media. The app features video series about food, recipe videos, and cooking classes. For people who are visual learners, Tastemade is ideal because there are dozens of videos to watch that will teach you exactly how to make a meal. Users can browse recipes by cuisine, ingredients, and more, and are able to save their favorite recipes to come back to later.

One of the shows featured on the app is called Sweet AF, which is described as “sweet recipes and sexy food porn guaranteed to satisfy even the most bizarre cravings.” Another is The Grill Iron, which travels to different colleges and tries out their famous tailgating recipes. Several of the fall-themed recipes include apple cider donuts, pumpkin french toast, and a caramel apple ginger root beer float. The app is aesthetically pleasing, contains lots of content, and is as easy as scrolling through Facebook (and possibly as addicting, too).

COCKTAIL FLOW This app has hundreds of drink recipes, from smoothies to mixed drinks, with an easy-to-use interface and step-bystep instructions. Categories include Thanksgiving drinks (or any approaching

holiday), sparkling drinks, winter drinks, healthy drinks, and several others. You can even search under weak cocktails, extremely strong cocktails, and in between.

There are also drink recipes specifically for certain occasions, such as girl’s night out or poolside lounging. From the Fruity Spinach Smoothie to a Winter Chill, this app will inspire anyone to try a new drink. Another added benefit: it’s way cheaper to make your own than to buy one at the bar.

n’ easy to diets, such as paleo, vegan, and pescetarian. Users can search for certain recipes and apply filters such as prep time, nutrition, tastes (spicy, salty, sweet), and techniques. The app is basically like Pinterest but solely dedicated to food.

Users can save a recipe by tapping “yum.”

Your “yums” are then stored under your account and separated into categories such as drinks, sides, breakfasts, dinners, and desserts.

SHOPWELL

Each recipe displays how many ingredients are needed, how much time it takes to make, and how many calories are in each serving. Users can add ingredients to their shopping list by tapping “add to list.” The recipe also says what nutrients are included, along with similar recipes. You can also easily text recipes, add to Pinterest, or share on Facebook.

This app is designed to help users make healthier decisions at the grocery store, which involves entering your health goals, taking pictures of your groceries and receiving recommendations on what grocery items to purchase next time.

ShopWell offers options for people who are allergic to gluten, peanuts, soy, eggs, wheat, corn, milk, and shellfish. The app suggests certain foods for you based on your age and health goals, such as being more athletic or having better heart health or losing weight. Users can even talk with a ShopWell dietician over live chat. Users can connect a certain food store to the app, such as Target or Stop and Shop, so the app can recommend certain food that is available in those stores.

YUMMLY When you first sign into Yummly, it asks about your age, how many people you cook for, what cuisines you like (from barbeque to Cuban to Japanese), what foods you dislike, and what your cooking skills are (beginner, intermediate or advanced).

Then, Yummly displays a personalized sets of recipes based on your answers. The app includes beautiful pictures of meals that will make your mouth water. You can view recipes that are popular in the area or explore recipes that are trending.

There are several categories, from quick

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Get Down with Downtowner

By Rebecca Turner

L

ike many out of state students who left their cars at home, I am a big fan of Uber, but I hate paying for it — especially when I’m not going far from campus. Being the athletic person that I am, my Sunday afternoon run ended with me eating pizza at Eddie and Sam’s in downtown and no desire to walk back to campus. So, I turned to Downtowner, a free, but limited, alternative to companies like Uber and Lyft.

While the cars may look like stretched out, glorified golf carts, their insides are more like normal cars — with seatbelts. They also have touch screens that allow you to explore what is available in the area as well as paper pamphlets for the less technologically savvy.

The app, which just became available in Tampa this fall, is currently available for iPhone and Android devices. It’s free thanks to the Tampa Downtown Partnership and other supporters of Downtowner.

Downtowner works a lot like Uber, asking you to put in your pickup and dropoff location. The app allows you to choose your current location, home (you can set this as UT in your profile) or any address within the service area. Afterwards, you can rate your driver, much like you would on Uber.

Downtowner is also wheelchair accessible, as long as this option is selected before requesting your ride. These rides, however, can only fit the wheelchair user and up to

THE MINARET | PAGE 42

three others, as opposed to the traditional five. If your passenger number exceeds that, another person in your group will also have to request a ride.

So far, Downtowner has had 579,422 passengers across five cities. To compare, in some larger cities Lyft pulls in over 500,000 riders per month, according to Forbes.

Downtowner is small scale in comparison.

The app is also currently functional in Delray Beach and Boca Raton in Florida, as well as Aspen, Colorado and Newport Beach, California.

If you’ve ever wanted to explore the city without walking around aimlessly or racking up Uber bills, now’s your chance.

The app’s “Explore” section lets you search for places to go to under a variety of categories, including dining, bars and even museums. Users can see how many fellow passengers have been picked up from and/ or dropped off at any given destination in this section. Downtowner also has options for hotels and transportation, which makes it a great app to share with visiting friends and family.

A feature yet to be fully utilized outside of the California location, but that remains promising is the Downtowner app’s “Deals” section. Other cities working with the app have discounts and freebies for Downtowner passengers.

After you have entered your pickup and

dropoff locations, the app will flash the expected wait time, though it won’t be as fast as Uber. I waited about 12 minutes for my driver, as opposed to the usual 5 I wait with Uber. Plan ahead and expect to wait for a little while, but enjoy that extra cash in your bank account — or maybe splurge a little more and get another drink at dinner since Downtowner can take you back safely.

Downtowner does only have a limited service area, with the boundaries going from campus to a little past The Florida Museum and from E. Scott Street past Amalie Arena, so don’t expect to use it to hit SoHo or Ybor. But, it could help you avoid the Uber Eats delivery fee on downtown restaurants like Taco Bus and Bavaro’s, if you don’t mind taking a ride.

Another plus of Downtowner, if you are fortunate enough to have a car here in Tampa, is that it allows you to avoid having to find and pay for parking should you want to check out the Tampa Theatre, the Straz Center or someplace else.

If you are worried about your carbon footprint, Downtowner has got you covered there too. The Downtowner vehicles are environmentally friendly as all are 100 percent electric.

Currently, Downtowner’s Tampa hours are Monday-Friday, 6 a.m. - 11 p.m. and 11 a.m. - 11 p.m. on weekends.

SENIORSENDOFF SELENE SAN FELICE PRODUCTION EDITOR went into detail about how he used the previous week’s edition to clean up cat bile. As a relatively small scale version of the Big Bad Liberal Media, I’m glad some of you hate us.

I’ve never been more proud of anything in my life than I have of The Minaret.

Every blow we’ve suffered has made us stronger. No matter how many people read us or like us or neither, we’ve more than succeeded as a student publication, and it’s been the greatest honor to be part of every step I could along the way.

I almost quit The Minaret—multiple times.

Over the last three and a half years The Minaret has been my source of anger, frustration and tears. So. Many. Tears.

I get it. Not everyone reads us, and not everyone likes us. Students throw whole stacks of papers away to try and silence our stories. I’ve had many people tell me, THE MINARET | PAGE 38 “It would be a waste of paper,” when I try to hand them out. One student even THE MINARET | PAGE 44

If I’d quit writing the fall of my freshman year after not getting my articles published (which, in hindsight, were poorly written), I wouldn’t have gotten the privilege of covering festivals like Big Guava, EDC and Okeechobee. I wouldn’t have realized my passion for writing about hip-hop and culture, and I don’t think anyone else would have given me the opportunity to explore it in print.

Who else would have let me run a sex and love column to answer students’

anonymous (and dirty) questions?

If I’d have called it quits as an editor, I would never have broken The Minaret’s biggest ever story, and helped stop millions of “men’s rights activists” from meeting up to try and oppress women worldwide.

My Minaret experience opened doors to several internships and even a chance to study abroad in Oxford, and I know when I land a job after this December, it’ll be because of my time here.

We’re not just a newspaper, website or magazine. The Minaret is made of UT’s most passionate journalism students, and I’m proud to call many of them my lifelong friends outside the newsroom.

In the past year alone, we’ve done some of our best, hardest hitting reporting. I’m excited to see next semester’s completely redesigned paper and keep up with the incredible stories yet to come.

I may be leaving, but let me assure you, The Minaret is here to stay.

PHIL NOVOTNY FORMER SPORTS EDITOR

I’ll always remember that day. The day where my roommate, Marcus Mitchell, and I first entered the Minaret office. I didn’t know what to expect, and I’m sure Marcus didn’t either. When we broke off into sections after the first general staff meeting, I quickly made the turn to the sports section.

There, I met Jordan Llanes and Griffin

Guinta, who gave me my first opportunity that’s cultivated my academic career: the opportunity to write about sports. Sports was and still is my first language, but Jordan and Griff helped me in fuzing it to storytelling. They taught me that the human experience was the main key in documenting such a niche topic.

What I also didn’t know was the impact that this publication would have on my life. After serving alongside Jordan Llanes as sports editor, I began my public relations internship with the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning. I couldn’t be more thankful for the entire Minaret staff for giving me the experience to take that next step.

After a year of writing for the sports section, I became the sports editor. On top of adding to my design, reporting and designing skills, the memories I shared were one that I will wouldn’t trade in for anything. Whether if it was Selene making hilarious rap references that were too dank to resist a burst of laughter, Jordan extensively breaking the sound barrier with his laughs, Mia’s strong desire to turtle, Doha’s non-stop fangirling over Aaron Judge, Lauren’s spongebob references, Jack’s constant reassertion of his manhood, Jackie’s riveting indie taste, and an innumerable amount of memories that would consist of a novel.

Lastly, I want to thank The Minaret for introducing me to my one and only: Zoe Fowler. Without me knowing it, Zoe copyedited my articles when I was writer, and we grew closer once I became sports editor the following year. Some days, we’d both be in the office doing layout, talking about life and building our own unique relationship. Last October, we started dating and we’ve been dating for over a year. To this day, she’s been the everlasting joy that never fails to exhibit her inner strength and beauty.

Again, thank you for being the home away from home, and for the people that came along with it.

REBECCA TURNER HEAD COPY EDITOR

I have put off writing this, as it’s the last thing I get to contribute to The Minaret but, as always, I’ve got to meet the deadline. While graduating early has been a blessing for my student loan debt, I am sad to leave this truly wonderful staff.

In my time here, I have been an opinion writer, the features editor and the head copy editor; I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Now, looking back, I can see I’ve learned a lot and I have some people to thank for that. Thank you to my freshman year opinion editors who taught me how to fully support an argument — which should help me in law school. Thanks to Capouya, who helped first helped me figure out feature writing and subsequently helped me teach it to my writers. Thanks to Bianca for always being on top of InDesign and having office dance parties to Adele when the nights got late. Thanks to Tess for getting me involved as an editor this semester after my last gig ended.

Thanks to our adviser, Dr. Wheeler, the professors who helped me along the way, and to all of our supporters and readers.

And thanks to Katelyn who takes on this role next semester.

I learned a lot, but I also had a lot of fun with The Minaret. I’ll miss ranking local pizza places by ordering pizza for the office. I’ll miss changing other sections’

screensavers to weird pictures when they aren’t in the office. I’ll miss making hats out of old newspapers while waiting for pages to be looked over. I’ll miss Bianca’s throwback music. I’ll miss the trips to the CMA conference (Texas, Georgia). But, most of all, I’ll miss the incredible staff.

There are some things I won’t feel bad about leaving behind, though. I’ll be glad not to have the server fail on Tuesday night, or have a fire drill during layout, or have to write up an article just before deadline because that writer who kept promising they would submit their piece never did.

There’s been stress, sure, but I’ve loved it — even when in the moment I hated it. I look forward to where life is taking me, but I’ll always cherish my time with The Minaret.

It’s been a great two and a half years.

Winter Intersession Registration open now!

Make the most of your 2017 winter break by taking a class at UT. Classes start Jan. 3 and end Jan. 13.

• Get ahead on your path toward graduation • Boost your GPA • Financial aid, housing and meal plans available • Accelerated course format Classes offered in sociology, marketing, speech, art, chemistry, anatomy and physiology, writing and more.

Visit SpartanWeb for a complete schedule of undergraduate and graduate options.

Questions? Contact the Office of Graduate and Continuing Studies at grad@ut.edu or (813) 258-7409.

COVER Graphics by Christian Maldonado

ROBOCOP | Page 29 Photos courtesy of youtube

TECH IN THE CLASS | Page 5 Photo courtesy of Pexel

WHAT’S APP-ENING | Page 31 Photo courtesy of Pixabay

SHARK | Page 6

SH*TTY APPS | Page 32

Photos by Kevin Frey DAVID SAMS | Page 9

Photo by Kaitlyn Stockdale and Ivy Velazquez

Photos by Julia Albini

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

AD TECH | Page 12

LIFTSYNC | Page 34 Photo by Julia Albini

Photos by Tess Sheets ETHICAL HACKING | Page 17

EMOJI | Page 36

Photos by Tess Sheets

Photo courtesy of Wicker Paradise/

MASTER CLASS | Page 16

Flickr

Photo by Amanda Franz BLOGGING | Page 18

Graphic by Christian Maldonado APP-ETITE | Page 38

Photos by Tess Sheets

Photo by Kevin Frey

GADGETS & GIZMOS | Page 21 Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Screenshot courtesy of BevRage App

NOAH’S ARC | Page 22

DOWNTOWNER | Page 41

Photos by Elena De Alfredo IPHONE BREAKUP | Page 25

Photos courtesy of Apple App Store and Downtowner/Facebook

Photo by Tess Sheets

SENIOR | Page 44

Photo courtesy of Kate Ter Haar/Flickr

Photos by Liz Maclean

APPLE V. SAMSUNG | Page 22 Photo by Kaitlyn Stockdale and Ivy

SPECIAL THANKS

Velazquez Photos courtesy of Pixabay,

David Wheeler John Capouya

Wikimedia