Author: Christopher Roberts

Christopher's Author Bio: Founder and editor of Technology Bloggers, Christopher is passionate about sustainable technology and environmental initiatives. He wants to popularise critical thinking, promote responsible innovation, and excite you about the world around us.

Earth Hour 2014

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This is going to be short and sweet, so please read it.

Earth Hour LogoLooking back through the archives, I was a little shocked to see that I had never posted about Earth Hour before. Earth what I hear you cry! If you were tuned in on Monday you would have seen my attention grabbing untitled post, which linked to the Earth Hour about us page.

Today I give you a challenge, join millions of people around the world in turning off your lights from 8.30pm to 9.30pm.

From 8.30 tonight, turn off all your non-essential lighting for one hour, to show your support for WWF’s Earth Hour. If you work at an airport, take heed of the non-essential bit and keep the runway lights on!

Big Ben Clock Tower, The Eiffel Tower and The Empire State Building with lights off for Earth Hour

Lights off around the world for Earth Hour.

There are all sorts of fantastic projects that now take place because of Earth Hour; an event that only started in 2007. Here are just a few of the great projects that you can sponsor:

  • Protect villagers in Bangladesh from tigers by installing solar lights
  • Support rangers who help to prevent poaching
  • Help bring power to remote villages
  • Fund corral reef protection awareness

Show your support tonight, be a hero. 🙂

Flappy Bird

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Flappy Bird, for those of you who don’t know, was a smartphone game where users had to try and get a bird through as many obstacles as possible. I say had, as the app has been removed from the iTunes and Google Play – more on that later. I’m not sure I can really explain it much better than that, so take a look at this video to see it in action.

As you can see people take this game pretty seriously. The chap says how he has been playing it for about a week and that “it has totally consumed [his] life“. I tried the game on a friends phone and sensing that it was something that I was likely to get addicted to I decided not to install it myself. I am very glad I made that decision. In fact I have decided to take a total detox from all smartphone and tablet apps recently, and it really does feel great.

A screenshop of the Flappy Bird appUsually I install an app when I have some time to kill, but after a while, I seem to be wasting far too much time on pointless apps. I took a step back and saw that playing games such as Flappy Bird was just a waste of my time. This article is not asking you to stop using apps, but I do want to make people think.

I want to make people think, much in the same way that I suspect Dong Nguyen wants to make people think. Dong Nguyen was the creator of Flappy Bird and despite the fact that some sources report the game to have been earning around $50,000 per day in ad revenues, he took it down. The game was very addictive and didn’t really add any value to the lives of players. If anything, for many it just caused a lot of stress and aggravation.

Anyone who downloaded the game still has it, but if they uninstall it it is gone forever. Some people are selling their handsets with the game still installed on it, although many manufacturers advise against this on privacy grounds.

What I want to know – in the comments below – is what are your opinions? Was the developer right to remove the game? As a society are we getting more addicted to such games? If so, how are they affecting culture – or are they just a bit of harmless fun?

Oh and folks, please don’t go taking a hammer to your phone. 🙂