Final Post

This CSC 175 course has taught me a lot about computers and how they work. Whether it be the Our Digital World book or the excel and access assignments. We also had weekly blogs and other assignments like the group presentation, all of which were interesting and helpful. All of these taught me much more than any of the other computer classes I have taken, taught me and will be very beneficial to me in the future .

Over the course of this class, I have learned a great deal about both Microsoft Excel and Access. Before the class I had limited knowledge of Microsoft Excel and I had never even used  Access. All of the tutorials were really helpful and the assessments too. The tutorials, even though they were very long and time consuming, were the best way to learn about the different features and functions of excel and access. Especially for an online class. I really enjoyed the both the excel assessments, especially the assessment where we  planned a vacation. It was a great way to do something different instead of the tutorials and cases. Both of the excel assessments were creative ways to put to use our excel skills. I haven't started the access assessment yet, so I cannot comment on it. But overall, everything that we did containing to excel and access will be beneficial to me in the future. I am a finance major so I will more than likely be using a lot of excel, and I have also learned that access is becoming very popular in business and I might end up using it too. Even though I would prefer not to use Microsoft Access at all. I also enjoyed the weekly blogs. It was something different from all the excel and access assignments, especially some of the interesting topics like photo tampering and internet hoaxes. It was another outside of the box way to learn in this class. And Lastly, the Our Digital World book taught me all the ins and outs of the computer and how it works.

I honestly don't feel like anything is missing from this class. We didn't go over and Microsoft word or powerpoint material but that is what I was most common with coming into this class, so for me it wasn't needed. We learned a great deal about Microsoft excel and access, which for me was needed, and just about computers in general. I feel like this class covered everything excellently, especially for it being an online class, and I would not change anything about it for the future. 

Week 13 Blog

On April 8th, 2014, last Tuesday, Microsoft finally cutoff support to the Microsoft XP operating system. XP made its debut in October of 2001, and even though it is over 12 years old, it is still one of the most used operating systems in the world. An estimated  500 million computers still use XP, with 1 in 5 computers in America still running the system and over half the computers in China still using it. But the end of XP should come as no surprise considering Microsoft had been warning users of plans to discontinue XP support as early as 2007. Customers were giving more than long enough to adjust and setup new operating systems, but a lot have still yet to change and that is the problem.

With the XP systems open to hackers, now that Microsoft will stop any XP updates and security fixes, it poses a problem to those still using the XP system and anyone else using Microsoft operating systems. To the 500 million still using XP, a switch of operating systems is a must. The vulnerability of the XP systems to viruses puts all info on those computers at risk. Passwords, financial info and other important information will be extremely susceptible to any malware or other viruses. But also, those with other Microsoft operating systems such as 7 or 8 will also be at more of a risk. Microsoft shares much of its code with successor programs, so once hackers are able to hack into XP systems, they will be able to use those codes to easily hack into Microsoft 7 and 8. The discontinuation of Microsoft XP will leave not only XP vulnerable but also new versions of Microsoft operating systems.

Even though I am sure it cost Microsoft a lot for the upkeep of XP, I believe that they should have continued to do so. With over 500 million people still using the operating system, it seems a bit harsh for Microsoft to just cutoff support for the system. Considering all the money that Microsoft has made from its customers, and apparently some very loyal ones to still be using XP, it only seems fair that Microsoft would have offered a free upgrade. Maybe not a free upgrade to the newest system, but an upgrade to at least windows 7 would have been reasonable.  But because of Microsoft insisting that XP must go, now all of Microsoft users are vulnerable. 

News article: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/microsoft-xp-cybersecurity-problem-105451.html

Most Interesting Thing Learned While Researching

One of the most interesting and possibly best things I have found while doing my research for this project, is the correct way to use Wikipedia. I personally love Wikipedia, and I get a lot of my general knowledge from the site. So when teachers assign work and tell us not to use Wikipedia for our research, it's kind of a bummer. But, I fully understand why most teachers do not allow the site as an appropriate research tool. Wikipedia's information can be manipulated by any of its users and therefore can be unreliable. So when I was doing my research for how to research on the internet, I came across some useful tips when trying to figure out how and when to use Wikipedia. This new method of doing research on Wikipedia allows me to use the information that I find from the site, just in a different way.

To use Wikipedia correctly, one tip that I found was to use it kind of as the search engine. When reading a Wikipedia page, and you come across information that would be helpful or useful to use in your assignment, the best thing to do is to click on the footnote. By clicking on the footnote it will take you to the citation from where that piece of information was originally found. That source may be a book, magazine, or online site. So if it was an online article, you can just click on the source and it should take you to the original site of the information. This method will work almost all of the time because if the information on the Wikipedia page is not cited, then there will be caution headings at the top of the page. This method of using Wikipedia for research is really simple, and even though it has always been right in front of me, I have never thought about using it before.

From now on, when I have to do research for an assignment, which I am not allowed to use Wikipedia on, I will be able to still use Wikipedia in a sense. Sometimes, good factual information can be hard to come by, but now, most of the information that is on Wikipedia will also be available to use. Once again, this may not sound like the biggest discovery to most, considering a lot of people probably already knew about doing this, but to me, it will help a lot in my future research.

Businesses and Social Media Use

In today's world, with the massive use of the internet all over the world, businesses are using every form of social media possible, to push their business. The company that I will be using in this exercise is Tommy Hilfiger. Tommy Hilfiger is a well known clothing company, so it comes as no surprise that they use about every form of social media possible, even Youtube. Tommy Hilfiger can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and they even have some sort of email chain.

Like many other businesses, Tommy Hilfiger uses their social media accounts to promote their clothing, along with even giving out certain promotional deals. The Facebook and Twitter accounts are very similar in their layout and the purpose they serve for promoting the business. Once you "like" the Hilfiger page on Facebook and follow the Hilfiger page on Twitter, statuses and posts will start to show up on your feed. Most of these posts on both Twitter and Facebook are pictures of models wearing Hilfiger's new clothing items, along with links to the main Tommy Hilfiger online store.

Twitter

On the Tommy Hilfiger Instagram page, the business takes a similar approach to that of the Facebook and Twitter page. The only difference is the Instagram page just posts pictures of models wearing Hilfiger clothing, whereas the Twitter and Facebook page do more promoting with links to the online store with most all pictures and some interactions. Maybe the most surprising of the social media forms that Tommy Hilfiger uses, is Youtube. The Youtube channel, which isn't nearly as active as the other social medias, posts mainly commercial type videos on their site. These ads are usually anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute long, advertising a new collection of clothing. But the Youtube channel does have a few other types of videos such as behind the scenes videos. And just like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, subscribing to the Youtube channel will put Tommy Hilfiger videos on your feed.

The last tool that Tommy Hilfiger uses to promote their business is emails. To be able to purchase an item on the Hilfiger online store, you have to include an email address, which in return, will result in one or two emails a day about new clothing and promotional deals. Unlike any of the other forms of social media, the email chain is the biggest way that Tommy Hilfiger informs its customers of sales and promotional deals. Most of these sales and promotions can only be found through the email chain.

Email

Social media has just allowed businesses to expand even further and constantly be in our life. Following any type of business on any of these social medias, will result in their business constantly popping up in your life throughout the day, enticing you to buy their product. 

https://www.facebook.com/tommyhilfiger

https://twitter.com/TommyHilfiger

http://instagram.com/tommyhilfiger

https://www.youtube.com/user/tommyhilfiger/videos

Google Drive

When it comes to working collaboratively online, it is something that I have never done. I have heard of Google Drive before, and all of the neat things you could use it for, but never have I tried using it. Google Drive would have been very helpful back in high school, when group projects were assigned. We used to elect somebody to put the powerpoint together, while the rest of the group found the information and emailed it to that person. Had we used Google Drive, the whole group could have contributed to the making of the powerpoint, much like the group presentation assignment this week.

Since I was unfamiliar with Google Drive, I researched it a little and found out that it was cloud storage on Google, that also had other apps and features, such as docs, sheets, slides and many more. It seems like Google Drive basically takes away the emailing part, when it comes to collaborating. So I guess Google Drive would be useful in lots of different work environments, where two or more people were collaborating together on something. There is a quick office app, that allows you to open and edit  documents and spreadsheets, which seems like it would be useful among people in a financial or business field. Another interesting app is the forms app, which allows to create a survey, roster, or even an invite.

Other than Google Drive, there are no other sites that I know of, that allow you to collaborate with one another. Until doing research on Google Drive, I didn't even know you could collaborate on it. I had heard of it in high school, but I just thought it was cloud storage , which I had no use for. There are a few other sites on the internet, such as Dropbox, SkyDrive and SugarSync, that are used for their cloud storage. But I am not sure if these sites come with all the great apps and tools to collaborate with people.

Google Drive seems to have a lot of useful apps, but I honestly can't see myself using it much in the future, unless I am required to.  Maybe I will use it if I am collaborating with somebody, but other than that, I have no uses for Google Drive. For some reason, I just prefer emailing documents to myself instead of using a cloud storage. I guess I am a bit old school in that aspect. But who knows, in the future as things continue to change and advance, I may find myself using Google Drive. 

Photo Tampering

To my surprise, photo tampering has been around for a very long time. Most wouldn't think that the technology would have been available to alter photos until the last twenty years, but actually it dates all the way back to the 1860's. Some of the first tampered photos were ones of our president, Abraham Lincoln, and some others were from the civil war. But photo tampering back then was a lot more difficult to do and only a select few would have been able to perform such altering. In the world that we live in today, almost anyone who owns a computer is able to tamper and alter photos. Since this is available to such a large amount of people, almost any photo on the internet or in a text publication may have been altered. Even smart phones now have the ability to apply a filter to make the image more clear, get rid of red eyes and even add different color scales to photos that have been taken. In some cases altering a photo is perfectly fine, but where do we draw the line?

In my personal opinion, any alterations to a photo should cause the least amount of change possible. It is okay to make an image more clear or get rid of a random arm in a photo but that's because those changes have minimal impact to the photo and it doesn't change the viewer's opinion on the photo. For instance, the photo above of the Russian army during World War 2 raising the Russian flag has been altered. In the original photo it appeared that the Russian soldier had a watch on each of his wrists. So to make it appear to the public that he had not been looting, apparently he had a watch on one wrist and a compass on the other, it was altered out of the photo all together. I personally think that this type of photo tampering is fine. Instead of having the public assume the soldier was looting, when he was not, they simply removed the watch and compass. Now had the soldier been looting that completely changes the story and removing it from the photo should be the type of photo tampering that should not be allowed. Just like if an American media outlet had changed the Russian flag to an American flag, and tried to act as if the US soldiers had captured the city. Any type of photo tampering like this, that changes the opinion of the viewer, should not be allowed.

Photo tampering is a big problem if it is being used in the wrong way. It's frightening to know that the photo being shown on the news may have been altered to produce a different type of reactions out of the public. Who knows what we've all been lied to about. 

Photo Source: http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/

Excel

So far this class has taught me a great deal about excel. Coming into the class I barely knew the basics of excel, but so far this semester I have become pretty sufficient at operating excel. Excel can be used for an endless amount of different things, from planning a vacation, as we learned last week, to just simply managing a budget. Excel can be an extremely useful tool in life.

Even though at the moment I don't have the biggest need to use excel other than for completing my CSC 175 assignments, there are plenty of things I could use it for. One of the best things I could think of using excel for, would be to make myself a schedule of all my classes and also my work hours. I would be able to just check my schedule and figure out when would be the best time to do my homework and when the best time just to relax would be. And because of this class, I would also be able to add different styles and formats to make each time block on my schedule distinguishable from each other. Other reasons I might use excel for my personal use is for creating a table for my budget. I can include school expenses, expenses for gas and the  amount of money I make a week for working. Clearly as a student I wouldn't have a lot to include in the budget but I feel like making one, would be a great way for me to monitor my expenses and maybe even devise a plan to save money.

I will however be using excel a lot in the future. I am majoring in finance and whatever job I end up with, I am sure using excel will be a big part of my job. It is likely that I will be creating budget spreadsheets and using excel to input other types of financial information. There are also many different ways that excel can be used to help control financial data to help with investments. So as I progress through college and into my future field, I am sure that I will only use excel more and more. The most important part for me is to not lose my knowledge about excel in the time between this class and my future job, especially if I am not required to use it a lot in my other classes. But I have a feeling that I will be using it some journey to receiving a finance degree and hopefully it is enough to keep me sharp enough on all the ins and outs of excel for my future job.