Tutorial Blog4: How to purchase a smart phone?

Tutorial Blog 4—How to purchase a smart phone

In today’s world, you probably will use a smart phone more often than other mobile devices. For this reason, it is important to choose a phone that is available through you preferred wireless carrier, available in your price range, and offers access to the features you will use most frequently.  Today, I am going to provide you some guidelines when purchasing a smart phone.

1.      Choose a wireless carrier and plan that satisfies your needs and budget.

There is multiple wireless carriers exist today, and each one offers a different line for smart phones. Before deciding on a smart phone, you first should research the wireless carriers in your area, and be sure to check whether the coverage is acceptable. Moreover, compare the calling plans for the various carriers and determine which one best meets your needs.

2.      Decide on the size, style, and weight of the smart phone that will work best for you.

Smart phones are available in various sizes, weights, shapes, and colors. Some people prefer larger, heavier phones because they feel that they are more durable, while others prefer smaller, lightweight phones for easy portability.

3.      Determine whether you prefer a touch screen, keypad, or mini-keyboard.

Modern smart phones provide various ways to enter text messages. Some users prefer touch screens because the phone doesn’t require additional space for a keypad, but others find it more difficult to type on a touch screen.  Smart phones with key pads might make it easier to type for some users, however, others don’t like the unfamiliar feeling of keys arranged in alphabetical order.

4.      If you will be synchronizing you smart phone with a program on your computer, select a smart phone that is compatible with the program you wish to use.

Programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Itunes allow you to synchronize your e-mail messages, contacts, music, and calendar with your smart phone.  If you would like this functionality, you should definitely consider purchasing a smart phone that can synchronize the programs either using wires of wirelessly.

5.      Compare battery life.

Any smart phone is useful only if it has the power required to run. Talking and using the internet on your smart phone will shorten battery life. If you have a choice, be sure to purchase a smart phone with a longer battery.

6.      Make sure your smart phone has enough memory and storage.

If you are using the smart phone to send and receive big amount of pictures, videos, and e-mail messages, and to store music, purchase a memory card that not only is compatible with your computer and smart phone, but also has adequate storage space for you messages and file.

7.      Check out the accessories.

Determine which accessories you want for the smart phone. Accessories include carrying cares, screen protectors, synchronization cradles and cables, and car chargers and so on.

Secure Email Project

Above are screen captures of my Thunderbird inbox that I have received both signed and encrypted reply emails from Dr. Means.In this project I used Mozilla Thunderbird to create  singed and encrypted emails, it helps me to get a better understanding of the importance of secure email. I had a lot of fun of using Thunderbird and will continue using it in the future. It was pretty interesting experience.
http://www.bme.eu.com/article/Secure-email-today-extremely-beneficial-and-incredibly-convenient/ this is the link of the article that I have found online.According to the article, Stephanie Willemsen, the director partner of marketing and management of TC Trust Center wrote. Three main reasons to explain why secure email is  extremly beneficial and incredibly convenient for protecting data are business requirement-competitiveness, legal requirements-compliance,and customer trust-phishing. Stephanie mentioned in the article that competitive advantages can be gained with shorter time-to-market and faster reation in customer service. Therefore, E-mail communication enhances the fast approvals and short-term submissons of proposals. Only digital signatures provide the necessary non-repudiation and tamper protection for those critical transactions. The best reassurance for customers is a high-quality digital signature on E-mails. This protective measure is inexpensive, generates no extra effor for senders and recipients, is also forgery proof. Companies shouldnt wait any longer to use signing and encrypting emails to protect datas in order to keep pace with the society and be more competitive.

Tutorial Blog 3 : Entity-Relationship Diagrams & Data Flow Diagrams

Let's talk about Entity-Relationship Diagrams and Data Flow Diagrams this week.Entity-Relationship Diagrams and Data Flow Diagrams are two tools that a systems analyst uses for process modeling.
Entity-Relationship Diagrams( ERD) is a tool that  shows the connections among entities in a system.For example,  a university have student, classroom, instructor, and grades entities. On the ERD, each relationship describes a connection between two enities. I have created a diagram shown below, let's break it down in details about how the flow goes.

In the picture that I created, a class may contains one or more students, those students are taught by a specific instructor, and may or may not be held in a classroom. A student may or may not take classes in a given semester, and may or may not earn a grade. It is important that the system analyst has an understanding of the system. They will review the ERD with the users. After the users approve the ERD, the systems analyst checks data items associated with student entity and identifies data items such as Student ID, Address, Phone #, Contact Information and Photo.
A Data Flow Diagram( DFD) is a tool that shows the flow of data in a system. There are four key elements of DFD the data flows, the processes, the data stores, and the sources.Let's take a  look of the diagram that
I've created and shown below. I will deifne each element in detail in just a second .

OK. First of all,  a data flow, indicated  by a line with a arrow and express the input or output data or the specific information into or out from a process.A process is drawn as a circle, it transforms an input data flow into an out data flow.A data store is shown as a rectangle with no sides, it is containing a place for data and information.A source is shown as a rectangle with sides, it identifies an entity outside the scope of the system and receives information from the system and then sends data into the system.
I hope after reading this tutorial, everyone of you will get a better understanding of what  the Entity-relationship diagrams and data flow diagrams are. Moreover, when someone ask u what are these two diagrams, you are able to teach and explain in detail to them.


work cited
Shelly, Gary and Misty Vermaat, Discovering Computers 2010, Boston, MA: 2010 Course Technology, 2010

Database project

This week’s project was to create an Access database to store information about the gym’s members. First of all, this was the most difficult project that I have never done so far in this class. I had no experience before; however, the tutorial videos help a lot. I was surprised that Access makes creating forms and tables very easy and helps convert a large amount of data into something more manageable. I learned how to create a specific database table, how to manipulate the query activity such as how to set up data order in descending, and how to get the data report. I learned much new knowledge in this week; I will be using Access in the future for my own benefit after learning it this semester.

One way I can enhance the functionality of this database

 would be to set up the system that is able to automatically

 delete the members’ data that are no longer part of the

 gym. Moreover, set up the system to send out thank

email quarterly. By doing this so, gym’s database would be

 very manageable, and it could be very helpful for gym’s

operating system.

Presentation Project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rgbTuizW8Q&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Presentation Project:

         I selected scenario one which is pitch an entrepreneurial idea to a venture capital company for my presentation project. My entrepreneurial idea is to create an online tutoring system. I grabbed audience’s attention in the first 30-60 seconds by listing out some pros about online tutoring system in across the UF.  I anticipated questions that audiences may have during my presentation; however, it is impossible to answer all the questions the audiences will ask. However, there is a logical flow and sequence of content. There were 3 units involved in the online tutoring system Registration Unit, Administration Unit, and Bookstore Unit.  I believed the audiences should get a better understanding of my concept and how the online tutoring works by fallowing the flows that I delivered.

            In order to ensure readability and avoid clutter, I created my presentation very simple and easy. I made the texts big enough to read; I provided the most important points and concepts in each slide; and I used harmonious color so there were more eye appealing affects. Avoiding clutter by using open space and I didn’t overcomplicate or use vague graphics. Instead of reading the entire presentation slides I said it and explained every concept in detail to enhance my presentation. The information I gave was concise and I think I got my opinion across pretty well.

            I watch other’s presentations and critiqued one of it; there were various ways to present a presentation, some people showed the facts at the beginning of the presentation while others played songs as an opening. Comparing my presentation to theirs, I figured out my presentation was lacking of some concise graphs. However, I pretty satisfied with what I’ve created. The one thing I have learned from critiquing other’s presentation is to make and learn best use of the advantages from others and to avoid and improve the disadvantages of you own.

            After completing the presentation and Web2.0 project, I learned some significant amount of new skills and knowledge of how to create a successful and meaningful presentation. I learned how to upload my presentation and share it online with everyone. I also learned that presentation self-critique is a great way to improve the overall quality of my own presentation. Obviously, PowerPoint is a useful tool in business field both now and future.  I would definitely apply the skills that I learned today in my future workstation. For example, if I will work at a company as a sale assistant. I will create a presentation in order to deliver a clear opinion and specific strategies to increase the sale. Overall, I really enjoyed the learning experience of this project.

Tutorial Blog2:(Lossy vs. Loseless compression)

Tutorial 2: (Lossy vs. Loseless compression)

This week I am going to talk about the differences between Lossy and Loseless compression. Many of you may ask the same questions about what are Lossy and Loseless compressions. Simply, let’s start off with some terminologies.

Losseless compression is a class of data compression algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data. It laminates redundancy in the images in order to save space.

Lossy compression is a data encoding method which compresses data by discarding (losing) some of it. The procedure aims to minimize the amount of data that needs to be held, handled, or transmitted by a computer.

Lossless data compression is used in many applications.  It can be used for archiving your original data so that you can edit later without losing any data. Editing and archiving are two places where lossless is an ideal. Zip file format is a perfect example of Lossless compression. By contrast, Lossy compression is most commonly used to compress multimedia data (audio, video, still images), especially, it is largely used for website by delivering your content to web customers or other uses.

The first image is the Lossless image, we can still have the same image quality, but the size of image is much smaller. Moreover, the second image is Lossy image, as you can see at the image (d) we are dramatically losing the quality of the image. The image looks so jagged.

There are four kinds of image file formats BMP, GIF, JPG, and PNG. Each format has its pros and cons, let’s take a brief look about the differences among these formats.

BMP- “Bitmap” is most common in Windows environments for uncompressed images.

GIF- “Graphical Interchange File” is a compressed technic that will throw out redundant pixels to save space. There is no loss of quality with GIF; however, it does lose the color depth information. GIF files are small and have capabilities to create animation images.

JPG- Joint photographic Experts Group is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital photography (image). It is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the website visitors.

PNG- Portable Network Graphic is becoming increasingly popular. PNG files are typically lossless and very nice for presenting extremely high resolution images to users. Both GIF and PNG have transparent capability.  

I hope some of you will get a better understanding of what Lossless and Lossy compressions are and better recognition of four types of image file format. When someone ask you about these relevant questions in the future, you have the ability the answer them all.

Work cited

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_compression

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression

http://www.imagepanama.com/gallery.html

http://computer.yourdictionary.com/lossless-compression

 

Excel Project

I was excited and little bit nervous to start the Excel Project because I haven’t used Excel for a long time. I was already familiar with some basic skills of the excel spreadsheet and knew how to perform most of the instruction required; however, I was still astonished what a vital and useful tool Excel is for personal and professional during the process of the project.
 In Excel Project, I analyzed a variety data and evaluated the effectiveness of a large fitness center’s particular workout. There were data of 500 subjects-age, sex, and 21 heart rate measurements from time 0:00 to time 20:00. The 1^st step was formatting the Raw Data sheet how to bold the headings for emphasis, how to center the date name, and how the use the “Freeze Panes” capability to lock the certain rows on the screen, when you scroll downward, the “lock” row(s) should always be displayed. All of these formats make date easy to be seen. The 2^nd step was to create many formulas in order to do the calculation of MaxHR, TgtHR, HighestHR, TgtAchieved, and PctIncrese. I should say Excel makes our life easier. For instance, I created particular formula to calculate Max HR at first column, as soon as I got the value I just simply clicked the copy button and then dragged the entire column and press Enter key. Excel will automatically calculate the rest value for you. And the 3^rd step was print setup for Raw Data. The project was pretty straightforward, and I really enjoyed when I was working on the Excel project. It was a really good learning experience and really fun.

The most important skill I learned during Excel Project was using the Pivot Table to analyze data. Coming to the segment lecture about Pivot Table, I have to be honest with you I have never heard this terminology before. What is Pivot Table? Pivot table is a fabulous way to break down an enormous group of data into a small, easy to ready table. It is extremely convenient and efficient tool  for business.Take a look at the AvgIncrease Table from screen capture that I created above. Instead of looking at the bounch numeric data, the Pivot Table looks more appealing.