People and cellphones: A new normal

Cellphones have become an integral part of day-to-day life. Many people carry a cellphone with them, whether they use it to communicate, entertain themselves, stay current with the news or to conduct business. “I think I would do okay without it, but I am definitely addicted to social media,” Ehlana Whyman, a college student, said. “I don’t live at home anymore, I would miss being able to talk to my family.” Others love the services cellphones provide, but feel that they could manage without one.

Online classes allow for flexible schedules

Summer at Michigan State University doesn’t always mean it’s time for summer vacation. As degree requirements become more demanding, many students enroll in the university’s summer sessions as a way to get ahead or stay on track to graduate. Skylar Austell, a senior at MSU, is taking online courses this summer so that she can graduate in August. “Without the opportunity to take the classes, I would have had to do a whole other semester just for two classes,” she said. Both of her classes are online classes, giving her the opportunity to go home or travel for job interviews without missing school.

One teen’s passion for developing apps

Hussein El Feky first became interested in programming when he was 13. What started out as a passion for building things, ended up developing into a love for program and application building. “At that point, I only learned a lot of basic concepts from random articles on the internet,” he said. Two years later, El Feky, of Cairo, Egypt, caught “the programming bug” and started getting serious about building phone apps, specifically for Android. “My first phone was an Android device, and I can easily say I fell in love with the operating system,” he said.

Social media allows small businesses to grow

Before the age of technology and social media, getting noticed as a small business was nearly impossible in a world where large corporations are the go-to. Advances in technology have given small businesses an opportunity to grow and thrive in the market. Social media has become a crucial component for any business to be successful. Companies hire people just to run social media accounts and to promote the business online. In a day and age where people live online, having an online presence is imperative for maintaining customers and earning new ones.