Mobil Devices

The increased use of mobil devices, such as smartphones and tablets is making for a much more riskier times for corporations. Especially, the IT departments of major corporations have more to be concerned with than routine maintenance and passwords. A far greater number of employees are exchanging sensitive information via the internet at anytime, anywhere in the world. This opens up a vast opportunity for information to be stolen. Also, a great deal of highly sensitive information is being stored on mobil devices with far greater capacity than before. So, there is more at stake if an employee loses a smartphone or tablet. That risk can be extremely detrimental to clients and corporations.This comes from an online article from a survey from AICPA "Surging business use of mobil devices is top business IT challenge;AICPA survey".

Moreover, by 2013 approximately 33 percent of business will be done using mobil devices. The business intelligence of collecting, reporting and analyzing data will be increasing vital to corporations with the use of faster and more convenient mobil devices to exchange data anywhere. All of this is according to an article found in Yahoo! Finance from WCI Consulting called " Impact of mobil business intelligence to grow in 2012 says WCI Consulting"

From Wikipedia, I found some interesting information regarding mobil business intelligence.

Specialized searches

 If you wish to search for individuals and businesses, you can still use the Yellowpages and Whitepages. However, they are now online electronically for the whole world to use. Sites such as Yahoo! people search, Lycos WhoWhere?, and of course the yellowpages are now ready to" let your fingers do the walking". Simply type in a name or address and hit enter. Also, a reverse search can be done by typing in the phone number to find out who that number belongs to.

If you wish to find current up-to- the minute news, a good choice would be to use Yahoo!News, Google News, or Bing News. These are usually directly from the major news agencies such as Reuters, Associated Press (AP), and United Press International (UPI).

As an alternative to search engines, you can use a specialize electronic resources. The more popular and well known resources are LexisNexis, Dialog, IngentaConnect, FindLaw, and Hoover's, Dun & Bradstreet. Each of these resources specializes in particular articles, journal, and a variety of other informational sources. LexisNexis is a service of information from a very large database of articles and abstracts on business, government, legal and medical information. IngentaConnect has more than  10, 000 articles online . You can view the summary of the articles for free, however, a fee is required to view the entire article. Dialog is a resource site for finding information about science, engineering, law, finance, and business. This information is a collection of journals, books, articles, magazines on a variety of topics including chemistry, business, enviroment, medicine and more. FindLaw is a legal resources portal specifically for law. Whether you need to find a lawyer or are researching a court case, you can find links to any legal matter. Hoover's is a very good resource for small and large business information. Just like Hoover's, Dun & Bradstreet has information regarding business matters like finding vendors, prospective customers.

Search Tools

So now I have an idea just how to find information, what tools can I use to research my queries?

You can use a search engine, a directory, or a metasearch engine. A search engine is a web browser to use as a general all purpose search tool. Google, Yahoo!,  and Bing(Microsoft) would be good examples of search engines. Simply type in a request in the text box, hit search and a list of hits will be ready for you shortly. Search engines have a unique feature called a Web Crawler, bot, or spider.This feature searches the internet for URLs that are specific to your request, and then adds them to an index for easier retrieval. These indexes from the Web Crawler are similar to the index in the back of a book.

Another rather useful and interesting search device, is called a metasearch engine. If you do not need to use any specific features of a particular search engine, you can use a metasearch engine to obtain a greater amount of information from several sources. Metasearch engines use webcrawlers to find links to various sites and compiles an index. This would be like using several search engines at once.

However, before search engines and metasearch engines there were directories. These directories are compiled by humans and a hierarchical list organized by category. According to the book "Discovering the Internet" 3rd edition, by Shelly, Napier, and Rivers of Shelly Cashman Series, the two Stanford University students who first came up with this idea went on to create the company Yahoo!. Jerry Yang and David Filo created a directory of interesting sites on the web, and soon there friends wanted them to share the list.

Advanced search techniques

Computer information systems and entry level.

On Google I got 7,530,000 hits. Wow!  That's a lot of reading.

Using the same search engine - Google. I queried...

"Computer information systems" and entry level . This time 48, 500 hits. Still a lot of reading, but not nearly as bad as 7.5 million hits.

That shows you how a simple change in your search technique can greatly reduce the amount of unnecessary hits you will get.

Using a Boolean operator search with a logical expression, will give your search criteria more depth. Using AND,OR and NOT  can make a big difference for narrowing down the list of hits and refining your search objective. Use AND when you want to combine two or more keywords. Use Or when you want to find either one of the keywords in your search. Use NOT to exclude a particular part of the search results.

Suppose you want to find a particular word or phrase in a web site article. You can use the Find feature for the browser you are in. Press CTL+F and the find feature will appear in your browser toolbar. Then type in the text you wish to locate and it will highlight the text in the article.

Chapter 3 - Searching the Web.

Searching the Web....

Well, there are a variety of tools to utilize when doing research on the internet. Just like a carpenter or auto mechanic has a great deal of tools at his or her disposal for just about any situation. Choosing the right tool for doing the job, makes the work a great deal more efficient and less aggravating. Using a web tool such as a search engine, should be easy to understand and use. The results should be quick to find and relevant to the search.

First of all, when you have an idea of the subject matter you wish to research, you will need to formulate a question or at least enter in a keyword to find information the is useful to your research. This is called a query. You can enter your query into the text box usually at the top of the page for almost any search engine or internet browser.






Next, examine the results from the query. Are they relevant? Did you find any results that appear to be very much different from what you are seeking to find? For example, if you were looking for information regarding "musical instruments" in your search query, but only typed in "instruments" in your query, you may get an unexpected result like "medical instruments".

A careful examination of the web page will determine the quality and creditability of the information. Determine the authors credentials for the information. Reading any background information regarding the author or organization for the web site is very useful to get  a full understanding of the source. One should also be concerned with the web site's objectivity. A web site that contains biases, or is heavily slanted toward a political issue or party, would not necessarily be the greatest choice, unless that information was obviously relevant to the query. Is the scope and quality of the web site of high value. Does the site contain information for the topic you are searching? Is the site designed for kids or adults? Any spelling or grammar errors in the reading? Do the links to other sites work, if they do is that information relevant?

Twitter Blog

                                               

http://twitter.com/                                                                               http://www.cnn.com/ 


Twitter is a live, up to the minute social media. It is very dynamic, and free flowing with information on anything you can possible want to communicate to the entire world. Just browsing over different categories, I saw tweets (what a stupid word) from all over the world, in so many languages it would be almost impossible to figure out the conversation. However, it was rather interesting to keep up with a sports game by reading the incoming tweets from the teams Twitter site. I was able to read some of the tweets from fans at the Army-Navy football game. It was very cool to see such comaradeship. I can see where it would have it good uses. To keep in touch with friends and family in different parts of the country or even the world. Being able to monitor your investment portfolio while on the go, and keep up with the stock market. It's like having mini blog posts and RSS feeds in real time delivered right to you. "Kind of two birds with one stone"forgive the pun. I am still very new to the type of technology. However, the more I use it the more comfortable I will become with it.

Chapter 2 blog

Chapter 2 was about the different ways to navigate on the internet. Web sites can be either personal or for business. A web site can contain one or more pages, from a one page family website to a corporate website of many different pages and links to various information. Web browsers such as Intenet Explorer, or Firefox can be used to view web pages. A browser has a list for favorites that is a bookmark for finding websites faster and makes it more productive in a search on the internet. In the favorites you can add foldes and organize your bookmarks for easier reference. Also, the history list very helpful to refer back to previous days of searching on the internet. Web slices are a very cool way to get a snap shot of information on a particular website, such as the Weather Channel. com. Current browsers have an accelerator which you can highlight a word and find out information about that subject using Google or any other search engine. RSS feeds ( Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) are useful for having updated information directly sent to your blog post or web site. This is very similar to a bookmark or favorites listing, however this an updated connection to you.
  Printing and saving material from a website can be done. But, be advised that the content is copyright protected by the owner of the website. Anything in the public domain must be noted as to where the origin of the information came from.

Net Neutrality

What is "Net Neutrality"? Well, according to an article in PCWorld (August 31, 2010) by Paul Kapustka, he defines it as the act of blocking, degrading, or charging extra for legal content and applications on the Internet by Internet Service Providers (ISP). An Internet Service Provider could be in an agreement with another entity, such as an Internet search engine and can steer internet traffic to their site or search engine, or they could just block the service all together. They could even charge extra for downloading legal content and applications for services that you have already paid for, much like premium services for cable TV. However, the cable providers want to charge for the service of using their lines. The Federal Communications Commitee (FCC) sees this as an opportunity to finally regulate the Internet.

In an article by Grant Gross (IDG News Service, MacCentral  July 11, 2006) titled "Battle lines drawn over net neutrality"he states that large corporations like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, would go up against consumer groups and internet companies like Google and Amazon.com. The broadband providers argue that they need to explore new ways for next generation internet users.

One business plan to be considered is to charge e-commerce businesses for preferential routing to their site. AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre was quoted in Businessweek that Vonage and Google were using the "pipes for free". He went on to say that because they spent the capital for the pipes, they expect an return on their investment.

Recently, in a Reuters News article (updated 11/9/2011) President Obama stated he would veto any Congressional measure to overturn the internet traffic rules. The Federal Communications Committee forbid any broadband company from blocking or degrading any legal content, but providing companies to manage their networks effeciently for customers. However, the Republicans view this as a way for the Federal Communications Committee to use it's power to regulate the internet.

So net neutrality will probably remain rather nonexistant for now, no one wants to cause any real problems to give ammunition to the opposition. As far as the investments are concerned, the big corporations will always keep through big money into the internet. The wireless providers are already being proactive with charging more for the mobile services.

Into the Internet - Chapter 1 assignment

What is the Internet? The internet is a vast number of computers all linked together, in a world wide connection of computers, smartphones, PDAs, and laptops. The protocol, is a standard set of rules for communicating between devices. This protocol is known as TCP/IP, or The Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol .

So what can the internet be used for? The internet is used for researching information, checking weather, news, and sports. Online shopping, games, planning trips, and more. Email and instant messaging are very popular ways to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world. Businesses use the internet for a variety of reasons as well. Keeping up to date on current events in their industries, real time stock market activity, researching new trends and important information in the industry or field of expertise. Ordering supplies, parts and materials for their company all can be done online, with just a few clicks of the mouse.

So how did the Internet get started? In the 1960's, computers had only been used by the universities and the government. With the Cold War going on, the Soviet Union and the US governments were both try to get the upper hand on the technology. The Soviets launched there first satellite, and the US was behind in the technology race. The Department of Defense was tasked with creating the technology that would advance us past that of the Soviets. The ARPA or, Advanced Research Projects Agency was created to do just that. In 1961, a man name Leonard Kleinrock at the University of California (UCLA) was the first person to come up with the idea of packet switching. The idea is similar to that of the telephone system. One party dials a series of numbers and connects to a party with that phone number. These packets could be seperated and sent to the receiving party on any number of routes and be joined together to create an image. After a successful experiment between two computers at both UCLA and Stanford University, the ARPANET was created. For the first time in history two computers were able to communicate using this new technology. In 1972 two men named Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn invented the TCP/IP protocol for the exchange of information used on the Internet. It was not long until the Ray Tomlison of BBN in Massachusetts created the first email program to send and receive communications.In the 1990, two students at the University of Minnesota, created the first file directory. A hiearchical system of organizing data into folders which can be stored on a computer for filing documents. Shortly afterwards, Tim Berners-Lee was able to discover a way to link words of text to other documents. This was known as Hypertext. This lead to more technological breakthroughs. The HTML was created for documents to be read by using special software. Berners-Lee is credited with the first web browser simply called WorldWideWeb. Finally, he came up with the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) which uses the web address to locate a document.

How to connect to the Internet? The oldest and slowest way to connect to the Internet is my using a dial up connection through your local phone line. This way just like making a phone call on a land line. The computer dials a phone number and connects to a modem, which converts the signal to analog to be transmitted over the phone line. This is painfully slow, but cheap. ( I am speaking from personal experience.) However, there is DSL or Digital Subscriber Line. DSL is faster because it is broadband, meaning it can separate the signal into sending and receiving signals. Cable internet connection is the fastest way to the internet. It uses your existing cable line to create a dedicated connection to the internet.

All information is courtesy of : scsite.com/internet3e/sources Shelly Cashman, Discovering the Internet, 3rd edition.

Module 1 - Blog Assignment

The start down the road of education.

photo courtesy of www.edbiyatdefteri.com

The first article was by Chris Brogan titled "How to Blog Almost Everyday"was rather insightful. He suggests that you blog about many topics, have convesations with a variety of people to discuss a wide range of topics. Also, the use of pictures and photos is very helpful to catch the reader's eye. "A picture is worth a thousand words". So that will automatically gain some conversation. Be more focused on what your customer or reader wants to see. The author also suggests, to mix up the length of your blogs, as well as, to write guest posts for other blogs.

The second article titled "How to Blog" by Farhad Manjoo was concerning the blogging efficiency. The author refers to a gentleman by the name of Felix Salmon, who says "Quantity is more important than quality", and continues with "don't be afraid of being wrong". The idea of setting a schudule to keep fresh ideas and updated information as a way to keep the interest of readers. The author draws a good comparison to both blogging and exercise. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Another good suggestion was to, get to the point of the blog. Try not to be too wordy. Most people do not have the time or patience to read a long winded blog.

The third article is titled "How to blog your way to small business success" by Matthew Bandyk.This was a rather interesting article. He suggests using a blog generating service like Typepad or Wordpress to automatically format blogs in such a way that search engines pick up on. That is very cleaver. As the author explains, anyone searching for a small business online would use a Google search. The author also suggests, keeping the self promotion to a minimum. Give people what they want to read about.

The next article titled "What a blog can do for small business" by Darrell Zahorsky was another very interesting article. He started out with the question, "What is a Blog?" He explains that a blog is a Web page with frequent updates to a journal. A man named Jorn Barger coined the name Weblogs in 1997. He noted also that there are two types of blogs, personal and business. Personal is like a diary, with opinions and research links. Business is a corporate tool used by both employees and customers, to share knowledge and expertise. Blogs are cost effective for a small business. No need to hire a web designer/developer, and any changes that need to be made can be done easily. Another advantage is that small businesses can share knowledge and expertise with a large audience.

Finally the last article titled "Use it or lose it: Five ways to keep your blogging regular" by Chris Brogan was a good reminder to keep your blog updated often. If you keep to a consistent schedule with blogs and newsletters, your readers will not lose contact with you. It is a lot harder to get readers to"warm-up" to you again, after a lengthy absense. Being inconsistent is also a negative. Going from posting three times per month to five times daily will certainly aggravate your readers and keep them from coming back to your blog.

So, how has blogging influenced your life?