Secure E-mail Project

Click to view larger image.

http://www.dotmed.com/news/story/12271/
A news article by Dot Med News

The article is about a study showing whether or not doctors use e-mail. According to the data, doctors use e-mail to contact patients, peers, businesses associates and insurers.

Doctors then said they were more likely to use encrypted email in contacting patients than in contacting medical or business colleagues, while they were least likely to use encrypted email in communicating with insurers.

Half the doctors in the study indicated they were interested in having encrypted e-mail capability integrated with health records software. It was then noted in the article that MaxMD, a provider of secure web services, already supplies this technology to eCast and other software firms.

All in all, I found the secure e-mail project to be difficult at first because I couldn't get things to work correctly, but once I did everything was a breeze. Now I'm interested in learning more about secure e-mail as I had never heard of it before this project. And if doctors are doing it, then it might be important for whatever business environment I find myself in the future.

Week 14: Muddy

According to Webopedia, a thin client is a client in a client/server application that is designed to be especially small so that the bulk of the data processing occurs on the server.

Although the term thin client usually refers to software, it is increasingly used for computers, such as network computers and Net PCs, that are designed to serve as the clients for client/server architectures. A thin client is a network computer without a hard disk drive, whereas a thick client includes a disk drive.

Essentially, thin client computing is a shift backward toward how older computers worked. A thin client is a display-only terminal with no hard drive as all the applications come from the server. There are many benefits to using this type of device, including:

1. Lower cost of ownership and maintenance
2. Better reliability
3. Better Security
4. Remote access to all applications and data with high performance
5. Simplified end user experience

For more information on thin client computing, visit Thin Client Computing Tech Info to learn more.

Also learn more about thin client computing and virtualization at Moderro Technologies.

Week 13: Clear

You need to be very careful when browsing the Internet so that you don't wind up with a virus on your computer. One very easy place to get a virus happens to be a very popular Web site - Facebook.

With millions of users on this social networking site, it has become a really easy target for hackers worldwide. There have been numerous instances where people’s profiles have been hacked and their Facebook profile information has been used against them to access their private and confidential data, such as their bank accounts.

Have you received strange messages from a friend, asking you about irrelevant questions with links embedded in it? If you have, be careful not to ever click on the link as it is might likely someone who has hacked your friend's profile and is trying to spread viruses through it.

For more information on viruses and Facebook, check out how Facebook can turn your computer into a zombie and how e-mails from Facebook can contain viruses as well.

Week 12: Clear

Going into learning about system development without a clue to what it was led me to believe it would be extremely difficult to understand it. Luckily I was wrong as it turns out to be just a very complicated way to get a task done for better organization and work efficiency.

IN a business, if something needs to get changed so as to make better use to time, money and labor, then an analysis must be made of what the current process is, what bugs there are in that system, how to fix those bugs and what the final outcome would be like.

Going through the whole system development cycle is quite complicated with all the back-grounding and paperwork that needs to get done, but it is a long road to making things more efficient.

Organization is definitely a plus and is necessary for a business to make full use of all its assets. If a part of the way the business works is becoming outdated or is found to not be running correctly, a change is needed and the system development cycle will work fine because the process is so long and complicated that changes will occur (as long as their are funds to continue the process and make the changes).

While I think it is still confusing when looking at all the paperwork and legal stuff, when looking at it in its most simplest form, the system development cycle is there to help facilitate changes in any business environment.

System Development Cycle

Creating an Avatar

Above is my avatar (or mangatar) from FaceYourManga.com.

It was fun making this image of me and reminded me of when I play games where you are allowed to customize the look of your character.

I think something like this could be very useful if you have a presence online (such as a blog or your own site) and you want to put a creative image of yourself to represent your profile - especially if you don't want to show a picture of your actual self.

And since I am a movie lover, I had to go with the popcorn and theater background. ;]

Database Project

I basically learned how to us a database. Having never used a database program before, and never opening Microsoft Access before in my life, it was a totally new of organizing data for me. I learned about creating tables in databases and while creating relationships between tables was not a part of the project, I can see how that is immediately useful when needing to organize lots of data with lots of redundancy.

One thing that could enhance the database for the project would be to have another set of data for age. Age was not used in the data except for a birth date. So maybe there could be a formula put in that would calculate what the member's age would be based upon their birth date and what the current date is.This could be important information for personal trainers who needs to work with these members as knowing their age can greatly affect how they will evaluate the fitness levels and goals for the members.

This was a very challenging project, though in the scheme of professional database projects, probably simple. Hopefully more experience with Access and other database programs will help me increase my skills and knowledge with databases.

Week 11: Muddy

Having never used Microsoft Access (or any kind of database program) before, I found it extremely difficult and hard to do.

In fact, I have yet to finish the project because of its difficulty and my lack of finding help/answers.

But I will continue to learn and will impart what little knowledge I have of Access here.

Microsoft Access creates a database, a way to store data to make it into information. It does what a spreadsheet can do but even more. It works on the basis of relationships between multiple tables and can create queries, forms and reports all based on the data given in one table.

It is very effective and efficient, but not simple. Knowing the basics is necessary to start with and knowing advanced tricks couldn't hurt as well.

Heading online you can find tons of tutorials to help you expand your knowledge of Access, such as About.com, Yevol.com and Microsoft.com.

Whether you find the right tutorial to suit what you need to get down is the tricky part.

Once working with a database program, you might find it being very useful for a certain situation when you are working with lots of data and want to organize it to make better use of time (and thus funds as well). Access is a useful program to learn and master as it will no doubt become handy in any business environment.

Week 10: Muddy

According to the International Engineering Consortium's Web site, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is defined as Internet telephony, which refers to communications services that are transported via the Internet, rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

The Web site also describes the basic steps involved in starting an Internet telephone call, which begins with the conversion of the analog voice signal to digital format and then the compression/translation of the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet.

Many popular VoIP technologies include Skype and Vonage. The best thing about VoIP is that it is becoming easier to use and is becoming less expensive than regular phone calls.

Having not tried this technology myself, I decided to check out Skype to see what all the hub-bub was about VoIP. Below is a video tutorial detailing how to download, install and run Skype on your computer.


Making a phone call on your computer is definitely neat and should be tried out by anyone who has a good-working computer because there may be some difficulties in the program taking up space and memory on your computer while it is running.

Check out the International Engineering Consortium's Web site to learn more about the expanding use of VoIP in today's society.

Excel Project

Microsoft Excel is one of the most widely used spreadsheet programs in business and is used for many personal reasons as well (such as workings with finances and taxes).

This Excel project was extremely useful since knowing how to use Excel is a very big requirement in the business world. Knowing how to work with formulas and various other aspects of the program will definitely help out in any work environment.

I've watched my father use the program to deal with his job as an engineer and I've used it myself a few times to work with my profession as a journalist.

Learning how to use pivot tables is extremely useful to organize the data presented in very large worksheets. In the project we used it to compare different ages and genders for the workout program. When working with other worksheets it can be used to help compare different parts of a spreadsheet just like in the project.

The formulas and pivot tables are a lot of work at first, but with practice they can become extremely useful tools when working with Excel and I plan on working with them more often in the future.

Below is a screen capture taken from the AvgIncrease pivot table used in the project. You can click on it to view it in a larger size.

Week 9: Muddy

I am still learning how to work with many of the functions of Microsoft Excel, the spreadsheet application of the Microsoft Office suite.

Word has been a constant companion through my education and PowerPoint has helped me out on many occasions as well.

But this is really the first time I have actually opened Excel and used it.

Since I am a Journalism major, I find it necessary to learn how Excel can help me function in that type of employment and it turns out journalists use Excel all the time.

Pivot tables are especially helpful during election time to help cover campaign finances for all the candidates - who can sometimes get money donations from several thousand different people/companies.

It is up to the journalist to play watchdog on campaign finances so there isn't any corruption or bribery and Excel helps to maintain a simple order of who gave to who and how much.

To learn more about what other computer skills are great for journalists, head to the Poynter Institute.

Week 8: Test

We had our midterm exam in our class this week, so there is no clear/muddy blog post.

I figured I should put this in so that it doesn't look like I just up and skipped a week for no reason.

Week 7: Muddy

Memory is an extremely important part of any computer system. Using lots of different applications takes up memory and can even use all of the available memory in the computer (either 32 or 64 megabytes of RAM). One way to make it seem like there is more memory when there really isn't is by using virtual memory.

Virtual memory is when the computer looks at areas of the RAM that has not been used for long periods of time and copies that data to the hard drive to free up space on the RAM.

I wasn't sure if there was data that wound up getting deleted or permanently moved to the hard drive, but it turns out that as soon as there is available space on the RAM again, the originally swapped file will go back to where it was on the RAM.

This seems kind of complicated for a computer system to do, and it really is since virtual memory slows down the computer. A simple solution is just to get more memory for your computer and this will make you have to use virtual memory less often (and your computer will run faster too).

Check out the article "How Virtual Memory Works" to read more about this process.

Week 6: Clear

Knowing about storage on your computer is very important because you're going to want to have a place to save all the work you do on your computer. Documents and such that you save on your computer are stored on a hard drive, a device inside the computer that essentially saves all your data and information.

But what if you are running low on storage space, want to be able to take that date with you on the go or want a secondary source of storage as a back-up?

That is where external hard drives come into play.



Whenever I would head home my dad would always back-up all my work on an external hard drive. I just let him do his work and never understood why he would need to do that. I thought of it as a waste of time.

Then one day a piece of hardware inside my laptop stopped working and I had to send it to get fixed. When my laptop was returned to me it turned out that the hard drive had been reformatted, or wiped clean, meaning that all my saved work was gone forever.

Luckily, because my father always backed-up my work on the external hard drive, I just had to plug it in and copy all the documents and files. My laptop was then back to normal.

Now I understand the full complexity about why an external hard drive is necessary if you have a lot of files on your computer. An external hard drive isn't just a device for extra storage, but is also there to back-up files in case information on your computer's hard drive gets erased.

Web 2.0 Tools Project

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Can also view my Web 2.0 project here.

Interaction method is to leave a comment below the video.

I have never done something like this before, but I truly enjoyed it. I have made many Power Point presentations and have even made a Web site or two, but this project was something new entirely.

I learned how to tell a story marketed for an online audience with this project. This is different from going out and advertising something on television or in a magazine. This is the Internet and you can do basically anything. If I wish to market something online, I can use images, audio or even video. Heck, I could build a Web site and allow customers to interact with products or services so they could learn more about what I'm selling before they buy (and hopefully that would entice them to buy).

It took a long time to figure out how to use my media form and incorporate everything according to copyright laws (and sadly a lot of things want you to 'upgrade' for more money), but in the end I am satisfied with my project and I hope you do too.

Below the video is a message that says COMMENT. You just click there and can say whatever you want about what you thought on my project.

Thanks for your feedback!

Week 5: Clear

Before this course,and the lecture on the processor, I had only heard of the term before as well as the term processing speed. From this two terms I was able to form the idea that a processing deals with the speed at which a computer...well...process things.

Indeed, this is the case as the processor carries out instructions you relay to the computer and depending on what type of processor you have, those instructions can take a while to take effect or start working immediately.

Processors have evolved a lot over the past few decades with the creation of parallel processing, which is when multiple processors work in one computer. I never knew what the sticker on my laptop that said "Athlon-X2" meant until working through the processing lecture. I now know that my computer runs a dual core processor, meaning two processors are running to speed my computer up.

That sounds pretty good for a college student who takes multiple online and computing classes!

So a major factor when selecting what kind of computer you purchase will be what kind of processor it has as that will determine how fast most of your work will get done. There are other factors that will need to be looked at as well, such as RAM, but that is a topic for a different blog post.

Week 4: Muddy

Open source software sounds really interesting to me since I had no idea something like that existed. An example given in the lectures of an open source software is Linux, which I have heard of before but had never used or really understood.

But the basics of open source software is that the source code for the operating system is out in the public domain. This is different from closed operating systems in that only the developers of that system ever get to mess with the code. In open source software, anyone can scrutinize, correct and enhance the software as they see fit.

This kind of software is good for consumers because it can save money since the software is changed and exchanged among multiple users. But there also can be security issues since everyone can view and change the software.

What I don't understand is why developers would make this kind of software since they won't make a profit off of it? And also, how secure can the software be if everyone can mess with it? Won't there be some people out there who will use the open source system for devious means?

Some places that are worth checking out to learn more about open source software (which I will be studying to find the answers to my questions) are:
The Open Source Initiative, which has a very long and interesting definition for open source software
Free Open Source Software, which is kind of like a wiki community on all things open source and even has a list of open source applications.

Below is a video on free open source software that includes Firefox (free browser), Audacity (free audio editing), Open Office (free office suite), Gimp Shop (free photo manipulation) and more!

Week 3: Clear

Navigating the Internet to find the exact information you are looking for can be difficult if you don't know where to find it. With billions of Web sites to browse through, one may never find the piece of information one looks for. That is why we have search engines. They are great to find what you are looking for. Just type what you want to find in the search box and you get your information. Easy, right?

Sadly, sometimes things aren't that simple.

Say you are writing a research paper and are looking for sources. Wikipedia is not a source, yet whenever you search for information that is all you get. There are easier ways to narrow your search to find the exact information you are looking for.

The most popular search engine out there, Google, has neat tips to help you narrow your search to find better results.

Google Search Basics helps you define what words to use in your search. Know that every word matters when you type them into the search box. Try to envision the Web site you are looking for and then guess what words would be sued for that site.

In Google's More Help section you can find out what symbols you can put in to the search box to help narrow the search results. These symbols include quotes, brackets and minus.

And to find a specific area of search, you can head to Google's Explore section which includes movie times, weather reports and unit conversions.

But if you are looking for safe and reliable sources to go with any papers you are writing, UF's Library Database is the best there is with excellent databases such as Lexis Nexis, Access World Bank and JStor.

Best of luck on your information search on the Web and remember, whatever you're looking for is out there somewhere. It just takes some time to find it.

Week 2: Muddy

I've had to do some research to understand what cloud computing is. The term is completely new to me and describing the storage on a computer with a cloud created a visual in my mind that didn't work.

What I was able to understand was that cloud computing dealt with storage. Instead of storing information or data on your own computer and taking up space on your memory, you can store that information online. Thus, you could just check the Internet for that information instead of your computer. So if you lost that computer (or it broke) that data would still be out there on the Internet and not be lost.

But how does that work? Are there storage Web sites that just host your data on their serves or what? In conducting my further research on how one can cloud compute, I found a easy-to-understand video that you can watch below.



The video is worth watching just for the host!
Watching that guy twitch as he speaks in that accent made the further research worth it! :]

Another place where you can find lots of information on cloud computing is InfoWorld's analysis on the basic use of cloud computing.

That's all for this week. Next week there will be a new concept that will either be clear...or muddy.
Until then!

Week 1: Clear

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States
to the creators of original works, including: books, pictures, dance, movies and music. This protection gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to allow others to reproduce the work.

Copyright law is important for the business environment because it protects original works from being used by anyone (called the public domain). If you were to invent something that would benefit society, you can copyright it so only you can make money off of it.

The copyright lasts for several decades and when it wears off, the material enters the public domain. At that point, anyone can use that material for an unlimited time.

For tons of information on the copyright laws of the U.S., visit the government's copyright Web site or you can go over the entire copyright code collection presented from Cornell University.

Also presented below is an amazing (and amusing) video detailing tons of information on copyright law put together with iconic Disney characters.

ISM 3004 Blog

This blog is for my class ISM 3004, Computing in the Business Environment.

Each week I will detail a concept taught in the class and explain why it was either easy to comprehend or difficult to understand.

I am not a newcomer to the world of the blogosphere and have several other blogs that you may wish to check out.

Movies: Past, Present and Future is my personal blog on everything movies. I am a huge movie buff and keep up to date on the latest movie news. If you want to read about exciting movie updates, check out the site.

Swamp Cinema is another one of my movie blogs, but it is more credible as it is for my school newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator. Catch up on more movie news from that site as well.

Otherwise, keep up with this blog to read about some of the interesting concepts presented in my computer course (and for the instructors, hope you enjoy the blog).