Week 14: Clear/Virtualization

A topic this week that I found very interesting was virtualization. I had no idea what it was going into these lectures, but was able to understand the topic fairly quickly. In class we defined virtualization as "a technique for running multiple 'virtual computers' on a single physical host computer system." You can look at virtualization from an ability of small scale companies, running multiple operating systems on a computer or for a large company, where you can host multiple servers. A website where you can find the background and more information on virtualization can be found here.

There are many benefits to virtualization like testing and disaster recovery. Virtualization can provide better protection for your PC. I would like to do more research on virtualization and see what other benefits and things you can do with it because it seems very helpful in the business world today.

Week 13: Clear/Computer Security

This week we covered a topic extremely important to anyone who owns or uses a computer: Computer Security. There are many different ways for hackers or other people to access information you do not want them to see and use it against you. One of the simplest ways to protect yourself is just by being careful and smart. Many e-mails are sent back and forth everyday and a good portion of them contain spyware or some other type of virus. DO NOT open messages from an unknown source and NEVER open an attachment from an address you do not know. Computer owners also need to keep their anti-virus software up to date to better protect their computers and information.

It may seem easy to protect yourself from hackers, however people find ways around the most secure computers, including those of large companies. Twitter, for example came across an internet breach scare recently when someone hacked into an employee's e-mail and obtained private information from their account. This shows just how important it is to keep your activity on the internet secure and safe in order to prevent anything from going wrong.

A good article on how to protect yourself from hackers can be found here.

Secure E-mail Project

By completing the Secure E-mail Project, I discovered how important using security measures (like encrypted messages) is for companies and just people in general. The story found here about the hacking of Twitter employees' e-mails shows how helpful these security measures would have been to them and may have prevented this from happening. The hacker got access to an administrative employee's e-mail and was able to view private company information like spreadsheets, notes, and financial details. Luckily for Twitter, these documents were private however did not contain any information about account holders on the website. Companies like Twitter and Facebook are in the spotlight and should be even more careful about using secure e-mail. I think this was a wake-up call to Twitter and other social networking sights, showing how important secure e-mail is to them.

Week 11: Clear/Networking

This week in class we talked about communications and networks. I thought learning about networks was easy but also very helpful and useful. We learned about the different types of networks:

1. PAN-Personal Area Network-your own computer, mobile phone
2. LAN-Local Area Network-single, local buildings, about a mile across
3. MAN-Metropolitan Area Network-up to 50 mile span-facilitate economic growth
4. WAN-Wide Area Network-statewide, nationwide, etc.

We also learned about the benefits and disadvantages of networking. The number 1 benefit is that networks facilitate communication and give us greater productivity as consumers. Networking is efficient and less expensive for us, while also allowing us to work with software. Another benefit of networking is the ability to share data and information, as well as being able to transfer funds. The disadvantages of networking are cost, security threats and privacy. However, the users lack of privacy just comes down to trusting the other people working with your information.

Networking is a very important concept to learn for future work in the business world because you will interact with it everyday. Using your computer or e-mail on your phone is all considered networking and is increasingly becoming more important in our lives today. A website that answers questions and help with problems you have with your computer or networking can be found here.

Extra Credit: Second Life

Using Second Life has been the first time I have ever used a virtual world environment. It was a very interesting experience, I never knew there would be so many places to visit or so many things you could do. The images at the locations I visited were really cool to look at, especially at Memorial Wall. I found it amazing you could type in a person's name and be teleported to the place on the wall where the name was located. Interacting with others on Second Life was very intimidating to me because you don't know who these people really are and I had a hard time finding people who wanted to talk to me. The image taken above was when my character, Lela Turquoise was in London, the outfits the people in that area were wearing were crazy! There was a person dressed as a vampire near me, which made using Second Life even more interesting.

Extra Credit: Avatar

I used the website DoppelMe to create my avatar. I thought it was a lot of fun designing the avatar and playing with all of the different options. I was able to select a skin color, eye color, facial expression, hair style, hair color, clothing top and bottom. Other options I did not choose to use were glasses and hats. I thought it was cool to play around with the different options and see how interesting you could make the avatar look. I think it is great that the website let me create the avatar for free, there were also more options for clothing and accessories if you had an account with the website.

Week 11: Clear/Information Systems

This week in class we learned about information systems and the system development cycle. I found the topic very easy to understand after we went through the entire cycle:

• Planning- where project requests are reviewed and then approved
• Analysis- completing a preliminary analysis where technology, objective, schedule, and cost are looked at and then a detailed analysis is completed where solutions are developed
• Design- figure out how to create the system, obtain the hardware necessary and sign off on the final plans
• Implementation- develop, install, and test the new program and train everyone to use it before converting
• Operation, Support and Security- look at the maintenance, performance, and security

I believe knowing about information systems is very important in the business world no matter what company you work for because you could be the one creating the system or the one learning the new system because your company is converting. This is very common in the real world and an article I found that dealt with this topic in the real world can be found here.

Database Project

The Database project taught me a lot about Microsoft Access. Watching the lectures from last week explained to me how to complete tasks, but actually using Microsoft Access through the project really familiarized me with the database. Importing the members document into the table that I had already started was the hardest part of the project for me. When I was finally able to figure it out, creating the query, form, and report were fairly easy. I also learned how helpful Microsoft Access could be for a real company. Using the database for the "local gym" allowed me to look at how an actual business would find it helpful and how they could use the database to benefit their company.

To improve the functionality of the members database I would add a few more fields including: e-mail address, picture, and last visit. The e-mail address would provide an easier way of contacting the members and updating them if anything was going on at the gym that they should know about. The picture would be helpful to employees to remember a customer's face and ensure the person using the membership is the member, not a friend or someone pretending to be them. Last visit would be a way for the gym to keep a count of how many people come each day, how often certain people come, etc. This would be helpful also for employees to familiarize themselves with the members that use the gym frequently.

Overall, I think Microsoft Access is a very user friendly database and is very helpful for real world companies.