Week 13: Social Media

This week in class we learned about social media and how it is a major part of marketing and business practices in todays world. web 2.0 as described in my ism course is " the way that users are empowered to collaborate, create resources, and share information in a radically different manner than the early years of the web. Not only can users create content, but now they can interact with content and share their opinion and feedback."

 web 2.0 has created a new frontier in internet use that has revolutionized how we interact with one another. youtube and facebook are two websites that have grown immensely and are now some of the main sources of interaction between individuals today. These websites are used mainly as means for people to express and share their thoughts and feelings. with breakthroughs in technology allowing us to communicate in new ways, i can only imagine what the next generation of the web will do!



Below is a video that talks about businesses and social media.

Week 12 - clear: Telecommunications and the internet

This week in class we discussed many topics but my favorite topic was whether or not we are addicted to online gaming. This topic resonates with me because i have been playing online games for close to 12 years now. Online gaming as dumb as this may sound, has helped me in a variety of ways. There have been many instances where i have come across some vocabulary term that i learned while playing an online game or regular game growing up because the nature of games is to try and make you feel as much as possible as if your experience is genuine and many times that includes using advanced vocabulary depending on the setting of the game.

Video games can be unhealthy for some people but i feel these people are already vulnerable because of predisposed conditions and video games just happened to be the first trigger they came across. Too much of anything is a bad thing but online video gaming is going to places it has never been before.

With new technologies like the kinect and head tracking games are more immerse than ever. I believe there are many ways that we can benefit as humans from games like for example, with the kinect. I feel it has many implications as far as therapeutic concerns go. I can see a game made for people who need therapeutic treatment via the kinect skeletal tracker. Im sure a platform can be made that indicates all the motions to help heal your injury while making it interactive and fun. The opening and closing of ones hand for therapeutic relief can be interpreted by the kinect and maybe will be a robots hands in the game or the image of the robot arm will be superimposed on yours when looking at the monitor for an augmented reality experience.

All from a device that was made for online gaming! The possibilities are limitless and online gaming will keep more and more people connected and provide a better support system as a result.

Below is a short clip on the health factor of videogames

Voice over IP service

Voice over internet protocol is now much more convenient than in its infancy. i remember about a decade ago when software of this nature was emerging but extremely difficult to set up, at least for my self. Now Gmail integrates its Google talk service which makes it extremely easy to dial out to local and international numbers all with great quality and no problems! I have used Google talk in the past for quite some time but am now using it more because of my high quality microphone and no longer needing to wear a headphone/microphone on my head. In the submission of this project though i did get very annoyed with the screen recording software because it took me about 30 minutes to get everything working, 4 different software attempts later. Below is a link to the .avi file that can be viewed on YouTube. The file seems pretty large partly due to my microphone in the video being a kinect from Microsoft and as it is a microphone array, required a lot of data.

VOIP overall is great and i can see it replacing cellphones in years to come.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih2BNsyRw2Y&feature=youtu.be

Avatar Creation Tool

Making my avatar was pretty cool. The tool i used installed very easily and creating my account was fairly quick. Compared to other sign up processes i have been through, this one was pretty straight forward and simple.Once I had the software installed the interface was also easy to navigate and had the option to go to your personal room and the dressing rooms where i went to change my outfit immediately. Overall the process was very user friendly and i would recommend IMVU to any one who is interested in finding good software for avatar creation.

Presentation Project

After evaluating the presentations of a few other classmates, i have evaluated my own presentation and here is what i found. I believe i had a logical flow in my sequence of content. I feel like the message was delivered in the right order. I do feel that if i could have cropped my company logo and fit it in to the presentation that would have been an improvement. My question answers why my company should be chosen towards the last slides which i feel is appropriate as you have to build up the service before you sell yourself.

Using photos of bare electronics that i thought many people could relate with but would be caught off guard and intrigued by i felt helped my capture the viewers attention. Combined by asking questions of the photos in an interactive manner, i think the media worked in my presentation.


I took a moment to explain what the situation was and where a customers need would be created and fulfilled with the wear of electronics.The claim regarding the number of xbox's sold was verified via the link to the news article. I believe by avoiding clutter i ensured readibility with the use of a bright color theme as well for the font. I believe i avoided inconsistencies as well and i also felt like my best job was saying and then showing it as much information was provided through the audio narrations.

Below is the link/video of my presentation, hope you find it to your liking and be sure to tell me what you think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd4DA10ar2c&feature=youtu.be

Excel Project

The project that i completed was a great example of how excel s a vital tool in a real life business. The scenario for my project was that an owner of a large fitness center is researching 1000 members who's heart rates were measure over a 20 minute period. She wanted to run a study on them to see if they hit peak heart rate targets or not and what demographics performed better. Because of excels structure we were able to come up with numerous statistics for the population of our study and analyze much information using our results from all the calculations excel was able to compute in seconds whereas doing something like this by hand could have taken weeks to complete!

As a result of completing this project i feel i have become reaquanted with Microsoft excel and can use it to perform various tasks in real world scenarios. Some skills i learned that i was not familiar with before were pivot tables and the if function. Using these 2 tools within excel opens up many factors and circumstances that can be accounted for within your spreadsheet. This project has helped me see the beauty of keeping data tracked in a spreadsheet for the opportunities to analyze the data with excel alone are amazing. As a result i am now going to take the use of excel in to very strong consideration when constructing my business.

Below is a screencapture of one pivot table i constructed along with a link to a good site for tips on excel.

http://www.exceltip.com/category.html

week 11: clear Database

This week in class we learned a lot about the data asset. Many companies these days gather a lot of information on there customers. Whether it be demographic information or anything else, this info is usually analyzed and companies make assumptions about their customers shopping cart or even what trends are going in and out of style. along with a lot of data collecting also comes the big risk of data security. There have been cases recently of large corporations getting hacked and losing hundreds of thousands, even millions of customers private information, in some cases even the possibility of credit card numbers being compromised. Sony was one of the companies this happened to when they were hacked and reportedly were unsure if customers credit card information had been collected. Below is a link relating to the story.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/04/playstation-network-hacked/

another interesting article on the same topic:

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/04/psn-down/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous

Data does not equal information. Data is raw facts and figures that can be used in context to answer questions and support decision making. Regression techniques can be used to create a trend line that displays data that is more readily usable. As a result information is created and is displayed. Patterns and theories can be deduced and decisions can be made from this information. In this manner is how companies like best buy use their rewards cards and make business decisions they feel positively benefit the company and its profits.