Student's Log
Star Date 07240.9
I entered 8125 very apprehensive and unsure about what I would learn. I knew I would have an uphill battle to climb as I tried to increase my Geekiness Quotient of 2, but I was open to learn. While the weekly assignments were time intensive, I, nonetheless, increased my baseline level of knowledge.
Before taking this class, I thought IT was a scary world...one that caused me to throw my hands up and run away screaming in the opposite direction. However, over the course of the semester, my comfort level grew in tandem with my level of exposure.
I understand how critical IT is to me achieving my future business goals and objectives. When I start my own venture, I am likely to still hire a CTO (at first anyway), but I have a clearer understanding of their role and the value they will add to my organization.
So, I came (albeit by force)...I saw...I learned...I tinkered (with new technologies), and, most importantly, I conquered my fear of IT (and now have a Geekiness Quotient of at least 5).
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
I'm Not Alone!
This blog is not meant to be a Part 2 to our presentation the other night, so hopefully I get credit for it.
As you know, my group topic was computer related identity theft. While researching prevention measures, I was startled to find out that I am guilty of committing a few online ‘no-no’s. When I mentioned to my teammates that I used my debit card for online purchases, they looked at me as if I were a moron (well, not really...then again, maybe Philip did). In any event, I decided to poll some of my Facebook friends to see how many of us were in the “Potential Victims of Identity Theft” Club.
In my unscientific poll, I asked the following questions (feel free to answer them yourself):
Do You:
1. Store passwords in your cell phone?
2. Store passwords in your laptop?
3. Regularly update your anti-virus software?
4. Even have anti-virus software on your computer?
5. Know the 4 signs that a website is secure?
6. Store financial information on your laptop?
7. Use a debit card for online purchases?
8. Destroy your hard drive before you give an old computer away?
9. Read and adhere to all pop-up messages warning you a website may have
security issues?
Of the people who responded to me, which were more than I expected:
All of them had Anti-Virus software and 90% of them updated it regularly (good job guys). Nobody stored passwords in their cell phone, but 20% stored passwords and financial information in their laptops. 80% read and adhered to all pop-up warning messages.
While those results were good, there were a few items of concern:
80% of people who threw out/donated their old computers did not destroy their hard drive, 70% did not know the 4 signs that a website was secure, and most importantly *drum roll please* 90% used a debit card for online purchases. SEE!! I’m NOT alone! Guess that makes us all a little moronic.
The whole topic of identity theft really shed some light on my own ignorance.Knowledge really is powerful and because I’m such a concerned citizen (and love my friends) I have shared my groups prevention measures with them (yep…that’s me…making the world safer one computer at a time).
Given the number of annual victims, I might as well leave my front door unlocked as I’m exposed to some of the same risks. Thinking about the large average loss and the time intensive process to clear your good name it really makes me wanna throw my laptop out the window, but not before I burn the hard drive.
As you know, my group topic was computer related identity theft. While researching prevention measures, I was startled to find out that I am guilty of committing a few online ‘no-no’s. When I mentioned to my teammates that I used my debit card for online purchases, they looked at me as if I were a moron (well, not really...then again, maybe Philip did). In any event, I decided to poll some of my Facebook friends to see how many of us were in the “Potential Victims of Identity Theft” Club.
In my unscientific poll, I asked the following questions (feel free to answer them yourself):
Do You:
1. Store passwords in your cell phone?
2. Store passwords in your laptop?
3. Regularly update your anti-virus software?
4. Even have anti-virus software on your computer?
5. Know the 4 signs that a website is secure?
6. Store financial information on your laptop?
7. Use a debit card for online purchases?
8. Destroy your hard drive before you give an old computer away?
9. Read and adhere to all pop-up messages warning you a website may have
security issues?
Of the people who responded to me, which were more than I expected:
All of them had Anti-Virus software and 90% of them updated it regularly (good job guys). Nobody stored passwords in their cell phone, but 20% stored passwords and financial information in their laptops. 80% read and adhered to all pop-up warning messages.
While those results were good, there were a few items of concern:
80% of people who threw out/donated their old computers did not destroy their hard drive, 70% did not know the 4 signs that a website was secure, and most importantly *drum roll please* 90% used a debit card for online purchases. SEE!! I’m NOT alone! Guess that makes us all a little moronic.
The whole topic of identity theft really shed some light on my own ignorance.Knowledge really is powerful and because I’m such a concerned citizen (and love my friends) I have shared my groups prevention measures with them (yep…that’s me…making the world safer one computer at a time).
Given the number of annual victims, I might as well leave my front door unlocked as I’m exposed to some of the same risks. Thinking about the large average loss and the time intensive process to clear your good name it really makes me wanna throw my laptop out the window, but not before I burn the hard drive.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Bing vs. Google
Last week, I thought it would be interesting to see what stress, if any, MJ’s streaming funeral would have on the global internet infrastructure. However, since I created those blogs in two parts, they weren’t well received by Professor B (in fact, I may not even get credit for them). So, I’m starting over with a new concept this week; however, I’m running out of ideas so this blog may be rather boring.
I was trolling CNN.com’s Videos in Technology and watched a video discussing the latest offerings from Microsoft and Google. One of the representative techies, Ben Parr, from Mashable.com stated that a new report suggested that Bing was bigger than Digg, Twitter, and CNN.com? (CNN.com….REALLY??) Having only been introduced a few weeks ago, more than 50 million people had visited the site. With those kinds of numbers, I thought it best that I see what all the hype was about.
First, I Google’d Bing (so wrong, I know) and came across http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html. This site offered a tour through the new features of Bing, which is a decision engine. A decision engine is different as it automatically searches for and displays any close relevant content to your search criteria as opposed to Google which crawls the web and returns content in the order of the number of links related to your subject.
For example, if you are looking for a French restaurant in Buckhead, it will not only return the list of restaurants, but also provide you with its ratings, address, phone number, average meal prices, and etc., all by hovering over the search result, you don’t even have to click on the link!
Can you imagine how many clicks Bing will save us over our lifetime?? Can you see it? I’ll get those precious seconds of my life back so that I may devote them to deleting the countless emails I’ve received asking me to hurry and get my complimentary bottle of penile enlargement pills (how did they know I needed that, I'm kidding of course).
Seriously, Bing holds a lot of promise to improve the way we search for information. I enjoy it so much that I’ve made it my default search engine. More importantly, it has a cool ringtone you can download from(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=043c49db-e33b-4603-a699-9f1fba8e9245). Bing Tone 2 is so cute that I made it my new BlackBerry ringtone. Oddly enough, you download the Microsoft tone to your iTunes account, which will then convert it to be played on any cell phone (even an iPhone).
Blogger Update: If you'd like to compare the search results of Bing and Google try this site, which provides a side-by-side comparison http://www.bing-vs-google.com/
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Forget the Research Paper, Just Watch This.
We've finally made it to the last week of cases. This week, we must choose between a case on IT Prioritization and Web 2.0. Since I still seem to be in the dark ages when it comes to technology, I desperately wanted to learn more about this new language called Web 2.0 (Geekiness Factor of 10). I guess if I was really curious, I could have just Google'd it, but who has time for that. I'll only do it if you make me.
So, I started scouring the web looking for anything that would help deepen my level of understanding. I read some long and convoluted articles which, I guess, would help the average techie, but didn't really help me, being the newbie that I am.
While searching for an answer to "What is Enterprise 2.0?" I came across a smart and humorous slide show that pulls all the pieces together. Hopefully, you're able to launch it. If not, please visit http://www.slideshare.net/slgavin/meet-charlie-what-is-enterprise20
So, I started scouring the web looking for anything that would help deepen my level of understanding. I read some long and convoluted articles which, I guess, would help the average techie, but didn't really help me, being the newbie that I am.
While searching for an answer to "What is Enterprise 2.0?" I came across a smart and humorous slide show that pulls all the pieces together. Hopefully, you're able to launch it. If not, please visit http://www.slideshare.net/slgavin/meet-charlie-what-is-enterprise20
Meet Charlie - what is Enterprise2.0?
View more documents from Scott Gavin.
And the Survey Says...
According to Tim Leiweke at AEG, the company charged with organizing the Jackson memorial, they were expecting a huge global audience with over 1 billion viewers watching the service.
While the final numbers are still being tabulated, the general consensus was that people flocked to their computers and iPhones to watch the live event. Couldn’t you feel worker productivity slow to a crawl yesterday? I bet your boss enjoyed that, or maybe he/she wanted the day off too and decided to watch it with you. Either way, yesterday was a free pass to goof off at work (hope you enjoyed it because they don’t come often).
At its peak, global internet traffic was 33% above normal. Akamai, which is responsible for delivering more than 20% of the world’s internet traffic, said it was the second largest day of internet traffic on its network; with more than 4 million visitors per minute around the start of the funeral.
Other websites experienced high internet traffic. For example, CNN.com reported 81 million page views and over 9.7 million live video streams, which was less than the 27 million live streams they had during Obama’s inauguration. Alternatively, MSN.com reported 50% more people watched their live stream of the memorial than they did of the inauguration. Ustream reported that the live stream was the largest event ever hosted by the site, serving roughly 4.6 million video streams. Lastly, Yahoo reported 5 million streams. Overall, while traffic was up, I'm glad that people are more concerned about life and the progression of our people than death and pop culture.
Gomez Inc. is a website performance measuring company that keeps track of how the internet performs at undisclosed companies. The CTO, Imad Mouline, said that “In general the internet held up very nicely” despite feeds that were loading up to 11 seconds slower than average coupled with the constant re-buffering. I don’t know about you, but the constant re-buffering was annoying as I was still able to hear audio, but was looking at a still, fuzzy shot for over 5 seconds. After a few minutes, I had to shut it down because I felt like I was the little sister trying to jump on the shoulders of my older siblings to get a better view, but no one wanted to pick me up. While I’m proud of what the technology hopes to bring to the world, it has yet to meet my high expectations and causes me to question…WHO IS WORKING TO INCREASE OUR BANDWIDTH? They need to get with it.
Sources:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25747892-23109,00.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1921446/how_many_people_watched_michael_jacksons.html?cat=15
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8139479.stm
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/07/michael.jackson.web.traffic/index.html
While the final numbers are still being tabulated, the general consensus was that people flocked to their computers and iPhones to watch the live event. Couldn’t you feel worker productivity slow to a crawl yesterday? I bet your boss enjoyed that, or maybe he/she wanted the day off too and decided to watch it with you. Either way, yesterday was a free pass to goof off at work (hope you enjoyed it because they don’t come often).
At its peak, global internet traffic was 33% above normal. Akamai, which is responsible for delivering more than 20% of the world’s internet traffic, said it was the second largest day of internet traffic on its network; with more than 4 million visitors per minute around the start of the funeral.
Other websites experienced high internet traffic. For example, CNN.com reported 81 million page views and over 9.7 million live video streams, which was less than the 27 million live streams they had during Obama’s inauguration. Alternatively, MSN.com reported 50% more people watched their live stream of the memorial than they did of the inauguration. Ustream reported that the live stream was the largest event ever hosted by the site, serving roughly 4.6 million video streams. Lastly, Yahoo reported 5 million streams. Overall, while traffic was up, I'm glad that people are more concerned about life and the progression of our people than death and pop culture.
Gomez Inc. is a website performance measuring company that keeps track of how the internet performs at undisclosed companies. The CTO, Imad Mouline, said that “In general the internet held up very nicely” despite feeds that were loading up to 11 seconds slower than average coupled with the constant re-buffering. I don’t know about you, but the constant re-buffering was annoying as I was still able to hear audio, but was looking at a still, fuzzy shot for over 5 seconds. After a few minutes, I had to shut it down because I felt like I was the little sister trying to jump on the shoulders of my older siblings to get a better view, but no one wanted to pick me up. While I’m proud of what the technology hopes to bring to the world, it has yet to meet my high expectations and causes me to question…WHO IS WORKING TO INCREASE OUR BANDWIDTH? They need to get with it.
Sources:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25747892-23109,00.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1921446/how_many_people_watched_michael_jacksons.html?cat=15
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8139479.stm
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/07/michael.jackson.web.traffic/index.html
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
It Has Come a Long Way
Today marks the funeral for the worlds beloved “King of Pop”, Michael Jackson. Due to the global outcry of grief, I’m sure the family likely thought it best that everyone have an opportunity to pay their respects while being a part of this once in a lifetime event. Even though I wasn't watching the funeral, it seemed as if the rest of the world was. Streaming video links of the funeral are front page stories on all the major media outlets and I can’t have a decent conversation with anyone on Facebook because all they want to do is comment on the service. Feeling left with no other option, I briefly tuned in to watch R&B crooner Usher sing a tearful rendition of MJ’s “Gone to Soon”. After his performance, it made me think about how far streaming video has come over the years and I decided to do a little research.
Streaming video has been around since the 1990’s, but really didn’t take off until the early 2000’s. The technology has made great strides over the years as bandwidth and internet access has increased and is quickly solidifying its place as a conventional form of mass media. While it still has a long way to go (as today's video feed was choppy, as are most) no one can deny that never before has the world seen such a great level of connectivity and reliance upon this technology. For example, during President Obama’s Inauguration, CNN.com LIVE served 13.9 million live video streams globally between 6:00 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. By 6:00 p.m., the number had grown to over 25 million! This was an amazing feat for CNN.com and with this type of volume; one could only imagine how many people watched the coverage on other global media outlets. Today, within a matter of seconds, I counted over 20 websites offering live, streaming funeral coverage. I wonder if we’ll ever know how many streaming videos of MJ’s funeral were launched. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if MJ pulled a bigger crowd than the nation’s first black president?
References:
1. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=98845
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_media
Streaming video has been around since the 1990’s, but really didn’t take off until the early 2000’s. The technology has made great strides over the years as bandwidth and internet access has increased and is quickly solidifying its place as a conventional form of mass media. While it still has a long way to go (as today's video feed was choppy, as are most) no one can deny that never before has the world seen such a great level of connectivity and reliance upon this technology. For example, during President Obama’s Inauguration, CNN.com LIVE served 13.9 million live video streams globally between 6:00 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. By 6:00 p.m., the number had grown to over 25 million! This was an amazing feat for CNN.com and with this type of volume; one could only imagine how many people watched the coverage on other global media outlets. Today, within a matter of seconds, I counted over 20 websites offering live, streaming funeral coverage. I wonder if we’ll ever know how many streaming videos of MJ’s funeral were launched. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if MJ pulled a bigger crowd than the nation’s first black president?
References:
1. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=98845
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_media
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