Apple's Outstanding Growth

Apple is continuing to take over the iGadget world, this time by posting an 87% profit increase this quarter. They accomplished this feat by selling 11 million iPods, and doubling their sales of the iPhone smartphone, climbing to an Apple record of 8.8 million smart phones for this quarter.

These sales figures helped Apple post a 3.1 billion dollar profit on revenue of over 13.5 billion dollars. These figures are astronomical and are far higher than any other technology device manufacturer of these times. The article where I received these figures at can be found here. Surprisingly, analysts still see more record breaking quarters to come in the future. These estimations come with an increase in Mac demand, with a demand increase by over 33 percent from the previous quarter.

With all of these figures release for the quarter, one figure that was held back was that of initial iPad sales. I and many other are curious of this figure as they have presumably invested a large deal of money into the future of this technology. An unofficial figure was release by Steve Jobs at an Apple preview event, where he stated that over 450,000 units have already been sold. This number has yet to be backed up officially however.

100 Texts Per Day

A new survey states that one in three teens text over one hundred times per day. Personally I find this rather funny/sad. Do people actually talk face to face anymore? Do people even talk over the phone that they are texting on? I remember when the text-revolution started and everyone first got their unlimited texting plans. It was all the rad to text during class and pass secret e-notes back and forth without the possibility of getting them intercepted by the teacher.

But really, 100 texts per day? Even when I had annoying girl friends who would get worried when I didn't respond within the first five minutes of a text I don't remember sending that many texts. That could be why she complained but that's besides the point. I still didn't receive that many texts.

The CNN writeup on this epidemic can be found here. Apparently as I read deeper into the article teens also make 5 phone calls a day. I would say this is average. But still, 100 texts per day is outrageous and I only imagine doing so with three to four girlfriends, or possibly if I became a bookie. Either way it's rather a stretch.

What I have learned from this class!

Since January, I've been concerned about this class. I'm not really a programmer but I had to do some coding. It was very hard but I got through it. With the help of my classmates and Professor Drake this class has been a roller coaster I never really understood what API's were or how this class was supposed to connect everything that we have learned from the beginning of our curriculum but "HEY" it's ok. I kinda learned a little something about myself in this class and that is good enough for me.

Though I understand what exactly AJAX is and how it is used I found an article that I figured might be good to end off the semester with. Well it's not really an article, it's more like a person asking a question. People responded with answers like: it makes your page look pretty, it runs like a local application and it's good for an ample bandwidth.

I myself think AJAX is a good skill to have under your belt, it's everywhere we look. Sites actually refresh without refreshing. It's very interesting and I'm proud of the fact that I got two of my iterations to use this powerful tool.

Facebook competes with Google

Based on the article found on the CNN technology page it's easy to see that as the web further progresses, old and dominate web sites like Google can and will eventually receive great competition. Sometimes this competition, however, comes from an unlikely source. As social media like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter continues to take over the world wide web, newer ways to look at finding relevant web pages begins to take affect.

While there is a massive amount of data compiled by these social media sites, they are often not indexed and difficult to search for. Facebook is trying to create an efficient way to compile all of this data as well as tie it into everyday search querying like a typical search engine of today. This would ideally provide search relevant material that could also compare the query with your friends and what they are searching or friending at that moment.

Google is still being Google and looking for new ways to progress and stay ahead of the market. Currently they are talking of a deal with Twitter where Google would display Twitter results on their search engine like it already has Google Adwords. This article states that the place a user still spends most of his or her time is in their inbox, and Google already has this advantage over Facebook with its Gmail email system. However popular Facebook might seem, I still doubt they will be able to trump Google anytime soon.

Google Website Optimizer

Going along with creating successful landing pages that will increase your conversion rate is a tool by Google that will help collect data to measure this. The Google Website Optimizer is what they call an A/B/n tool. This stands for the comparison of web page version A to web page version B, and n stands for C, D, E, etc.. This tool is used to compare one web page to another and have real life users make decisions on the actual web page. They get a chance to make a conversion decision on different web page hypothesis and have their data represented accurately.

How it works is you provide two or more different web designs to Google and the tool unknowingly displays these different versions to the visitors, and like Google Analytics it tracks what they are doing on your page, and measures the conversion rate of all of the different pages. This way you will then have tangible data to compare and help make a better decision as to which version to use.

Using the WiderFunnel LIFT model as I previously described can help create better web page version hypothesis that will ideally provide you with better conversion rates. This way you can use the Goggle Website Optimizer between the best overall pages to come up with the best web page with the most optimal conversion rate.

The WidedFunnel LIFT

Using a search engine like Google to yield results on how to increase your conversion rate leads you to two separate types of web page design education; one which talks about specific tips to help your web site’s conversion rate, and another is a different set of pages all together which talk about detailed models to implement in order to do the same. The primary distinction is that the models help to develop valid test hypothesis (new web site designs of current pages) by using a structured methodology.

The methodology I'll talk about specifically is called the WiderFunnel LIFT Model, which stands for the Landing Page Influence Function for Tests. WiderFunnel is a marketing optimization design team that uses this self-created LIFT model as well as the “proprietary closed-loop, scaleable, continuous-improvement process to execute Conversion Optimization” called the Kaizen Method as a strategy for their clients.

The WiderFunnel LIFT model was published in a blog article on the WiderFunnel web site on March 16th, 2009. At the beginning of the article WiderFunnel claims to have lifted each of their clients’ conversion rates by at least 10%, all the way up to 277%. This is a lofty claim, but if proved to be true shows the real possibility and power of using a specific model like the LIFT model to help aid in your web design process. WiderFunnel states that a true methodology is better than plain tips as most web sites provide for help with web design and conversion rates. The WiderFunnel LIFT model is made up of six conversion factors: Urgency, Clarity, Relevance, Distraction, Anxiety, and Value Proposition. The WiderFunnel website is found here.

Today's Web 2.0

In today’s Web 2.0 world things are a lot different than they were when the first website was considered to be published almost twenty years ago. In 1991 Tim Berners-Lee was the first to combine Internet communication of that time (both email and Usenet) with the early days of hypertext (which soon became HTML) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_design). As web design and the Web itself further progressed I remember the first web page I created in elementary school, and how I was jealous of pages online who were using table layouts for frames. By the time I picked up web design in high school (at the Livonia Career center) and actually learned how to use tables correctly, it was no longer the norm. The World Wide Web had moved on the bigger and better things such as Macromedia Flash, Cascading Style Sheets, and JavaScript.

With the advancement in web browsers over the last few years; including the redistribution of the web browser market share, and the increasing browser support of W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (which includes recommendations on everything from HTML, CSS, DOM, to XML), the World Wide Web has changed. Now in the Web 2.0 world web design has began to become a science based on statistics and real life testing, and has started to stray from fancy web design and all-flash websites. Web designers are now focused in making web sites with a clear purpose, and using this clarity to increase website conversion rates: the process of getting users to do what you want them to on your website.

This can be different for each site. Some sites may want users to simply join their product mailing list; others may want you to register for a specific web-based product or actually order their real life product and have it shipped to your house. Whatever the purpose may be, there is now specific data that has been collected which leads to a certain set of criteria each web designer should now try and implement into their web sites to increase their conversion rate.

The iPad helps you cook!

With all the hype about the new iPad, I figured I'd try to understand what makes it so great. According to this article it seems that people are using their ipad to help them create tasty creations. I bet this is so convenient for us that like to try new recipes. I can recall trying new recipes and constantly having to run to my computer or laptop.

The iPad can just sit on your counter and it'll serve just like a piece of paper. As long as the cook is careful around it I imagine this would be a great idea. My favorite site to get recipes from is Campbell's and foodnetwork.com. The author of the article is fond of a website named epicurious and bigoven. I've never been to these sites but I guess they're great too.

I guess that one day I will jump on the "Apple" band wagon but as for right now I'll just stick to liking a few features and jamming out to my iPod. This is an unusual function though. I never thought to use the iPad in this way. With it's marketable features of it being thin and very portable though, i can understand how one would be excited to use it in the kitchen.

The LAST BLOG>>> McAfee and Stuff

While I was at work today, my computer started acting crazy. It was restarting itself after every 40 seconds. Soon after I realized that almost all the computers were behaving that way.
Twitter has been buzzing with the news this afternoon that McAfee updates were shutting down XP PCs.
This is what Mcafee saida according to this article:

The faulty update has been removed from all McAfee download servers, preventing any further impact on customers. We are not aware of significant impact on consumers and believe we have effectively limited such occurrence.

McAfee teams are working with the highest priority to support impacted customers and plan to provide an update virus definition file shortly. McAfee apologizes for any inconvenience to our customers.

Anyways, our group project came out pretty good. It matches the requirements for the Group Iteration 3 which is good. Although I am little jealous when I look at Adam Heeter's Group project which by the way looks amazing. But I really enjoyed learning about Ajax.

I am so happy that this semester is finally over. But I have four more months to graduate. So last weekend we finally completed our project. I really enjoyed blogging for this class. Although commenting could be hard sometimes. In the end, I would like to thank John Drake for all the encouragement. I would also like to thank Joe for being so supportive during the entire project.

And Good Luck to everyone else.

"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success."
– Thomas J. Watson

Last Blog

It has finally come, the last blog of the class. There are so many things that have been instructed and presented to us throughout this course that have left many different emotions about this whole class. Is working with ajax, JavaScript etc something that I want to do?No not at all, but it still has taught and shown me some interesting things that I am glad that I've gotten to know.

Next step I have no idea what it is about to be; whether it will be jump right into the job force, getting more education or certifying myself in some technology field. And one of those certifications I was looking into is from Microsoft certification called Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. This certification enables you to demonstrate the ability to design and implement an infrastructure solution with Windows server 2003 based business solutions.

This was a good experience in taking this class. And who knows what else that might be in the future right now, but I am looking forward to see what is all out there in Information Technology world.

Google New Site for Data Request

Do you wanna find out which governments are hassling Google for user information, well Google recently has established a new site;named Government requests, for this purpose. This new site displays a map of the entire world and it shows the different countries that have given Google and YouTube government requests to either provide user data and information or removal of content.

Google says thats all of the information is not perfect to give complete detail of all the requests. This is due to the fact that one government can ask for many different users or removal of one or more URL's, but this information still gives a pretty clear view of how many requests the company gets and from where the request comes from.

The country that asks for the most requests is Brazil with 3,683 data requests and 291 content removal requests. Coming up in second is the United States with 3,580 data requests and 123 removal requests. But then the requests from countries drops in data requests with the United Kingdom and India coming up with 1,166 and 1,061.

Government Request Site

Google does not ignore these requests and they stated that they have partially or fully complied with approximately 82.5% of these requests. And Google is quoted in their blog post as stating that"it hopes the new Government requests site "will shine some light on the scale and scope of government requests for censorship and data around the globe. We also hope that this is just the first step toward increased transparency about those actions across the technology and communications industries."

You Tube

One website that I think is wonderful is You Tube. You Tube offers the ability to upload videos to the Internet for anyone to see. You can share videos with friends or family at any time. Looking for an old commercial or TV show that you have not seen in years? Chances are it is on You Tube.

You Tube

You Tube first entered the scene in 2005. At that time there was no website that offered the ability for people to upload their videos directly to the Internet. Since its founding You Tube has hosted millions of videos to the site. Users can share video with their friends instantly. With your user account you can control who is able to view your videos.

You Tube offers a great service to Internet users that was previously unavailable. With the click of a mouse the user can instantly pull up videos that they are looking for. Who knows....you may even stumble across a TV show or commercial you have not seen in years.

Microsoft

Whether you love them or hate them one thing you cannot escape in the world of computers is Microsoft. They have been in the vocabulary of personal computers since 1975. Bill Gates started tinkering with the idea of a personal computer in his garage in Seattle, Washington. Since its inception Microsoft has grown to become a computer giant.

You can see more about the history of Microsoft here

Microsoft has quite a few computer projects under their belt...the big one being Microsoft Windows. Windows first entered the arena in 1985. Since then there have been many releases of Windows. Windows 95 was a huge breakthrough with the use of GUI's instead of flimsy graphics. Currently Windows 7 is the latest Windows operating system...which in my opinion offers much better performance the Windows Vista.

Microsoft has had a long history with the Windows operating system. Is there still room for improvement?? Yes. I think Microsoft has taken a big step in the right direction with Windows 7. It offers much better performance than the previous version of Windows.

Last Blog

So I wanted my last blog to be important and meaning but, it isn't. I am amazed to have finally finished this class and this semester. I graduate on sunday and am very exicted to take the next step into my masters. I am going to get a masters in MSIS and am exicted to see how difficult it is.

So this weeks blog is about how apples iPhone broke their sales records this quarter. "iPhone sales were at an all-time high," said Peter Oppenheimer. They said its due to the abilities of the iPhone is why its having so much success. Competitors are having trouble competing with its possibilities.

The iPhone is a great success for Apple Inc. It really gave them the upperhand in the world of smart phone. I found this story on computerworld.com and this is the exact link to find the information you might be interested in.

Last Post - Thanks!

I thought the the final post of the semester should represent the closure of my experience at Eastern. It has been a great ride. I look forward to seeing where everyone ends up in the business world - I am sure that we have been given the skills necessary for success. Eastern has allowed us all to grow in ways that we may not even be made aware of right now.

I just wanted to send out a thank you to all of my Professors throughout these last four years... mostly for putting up for my terrible jokes and puns. I wish you all the best. I hope that Eastern continues to value your expertise as much as I know the students do. I would also like to thank my group this semester - you all did a great job and I am proud of our end result.

As we all search for jobs, try to open our businesses, or just go home to be with family, I am sure that the experiences for the last four years will never be forgotten. College is supposed to be the best time of your life - I think that it is just the beginning.

IT Jobs

There are many opportunities available for those of us who have fallen into the IT field. Many of them seem to be rather high paying, but there is one major drawback in today's economy - experience. There are people that are actively seeking for jobs that have fifteen years experience, that do not require any training other than corporate processes, and who are more willing to relocate in order to take/maintain a job.

There is hope, though. Careerbuilder.com states, “Business expansion and the increased reliance on technology within all sectors has resulted in a competitive environment for skilled IT professionals,” says Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology. “Many companies are raising base compensation for new hires and offering additional perks, including signing bonuses and equity incentives, to recruit and retain top candidates.” This means that, assuming you find a proper job, you will be put into a better situation than there would have been some years ago.

I can only hope that there are positions that are actively seeking recent graduates, as many of the job requirements that I have seen seem to want experience, experience, and more experience. Cross your fingers, everyone - we might need a little luck.

API Documentation

One of the main issues this semester was the lack of available for each individual API that many of us attempted to use. Google has set up discussion groups and blogs that will assist you in the development of a workable API, but even then there are many situations that are not easily worked around or understood.

An example of this struggle would be with the attempted use of the C-Net API. There were so many variations of it [Java Script, PHP, etc] that I believe the developers lost the simplicity that API's are supposed to achieve. There really should not be a reason why implementation of this sort should be difficult, but it remains so.

Even if there is documentation for an API, many of them have usage limits that are simply unreasonable. I have seen examples where there was only an allowance of three requests per hour - just testing the API would have put you over the limit. Many of the methodologies are created by people who quickly put something together, rather than those who were actually trying to make life a little easier. Worst of all, it is extremely difficult to read and understand code that was not developed yourself.

All things being equal, finding documentation turned out to be a project in and of itself. I hope everyone had a good time creating their projects.

History of Computers

As the semester wraps up I was thinking about the impact that computers have on our daily lives. Computers have changed the way that people around the world communicate. They have changed the way many people shop, and they have changed the way information is exchanged. Someone can sit at their computer and shop across the country or send an Email around the world with just the click of a mouse.

For more information on the history of computers click here.

Remember when you would have to send a letter and wait a couple of days to get there? With Email it can be sent within seconds. Remember when you had to go across town to find that special item you were looking for? Well now you can shop from the comfort of your living room. Computers have made many things much easier. I can remember in the early days of the PC when an upgrade became available you would to have to take it to the store where it was purchased and they would send it out for an upgrade. Now you can upgrade your computer instantly with downloadable patches provided by the manufacturer. You can even download movies over the internet and watch them on your computer. Wow how the times have changed.

I believe that computers are a great asset to the world as they make many things easily available that were not so easily available before. As the Internet and computers continue to advance I believe more products and services will become available. One thing is for sure...the Internet and computers have really changed how the world does things.

Final Blog!!! / New iPhone

First, I would like to take this opportunity to scream: FINALLY, THIS IS MY LAST POST...EVER!!!!! Okay but seriously I thought this day would never come. When Professor Drake gave us this task back in January, I told myself there is no way I will be able to write something consistently every week. But I am glad that I did instead of just slacking off and then having to scramble to get in 5 posts in one week. Overall, I thought the whole blog idea was really fun. I usually spend my time anyway finding cool information on the internet and this allowed me to share my findings with others. As well as seeing other interesting information found by my classmates.

My last post is about a very, very unlucky young Apple Software Engineer. Gray Powell was given a 4th generation iPhone prototype to test in the real world. Well he had it in a special case that disguised it as a iPhone 3GS. Unfortunately, he went out with some of his friends, drank many beers and ended up leaving the prototype iPhone on his bar stool.

Well the story goes, a near by fellow bar patron found the phone, not knowing that it was a prototype, and waited for Gray to come back (he never did). Next day he discovers that it is something special and tries to call Apple to let them know that he has something that they might want back, but no one took him seriously. Before you know it, he ends up selling the phone to online tech blog giant, GIZMODO, for $5,000. Gizmodo then ends up leaking many, many pics and videos showing off the prototype of the iPhone that will be unveiled in June. There were many doubters that this could be the real deal, but then Gizmodo received a letter (shown above) from Apple's legal team asking for the phone back. This all but confirms it real.

This is really crazy to me. Imagine how you would feel knowing that you single handedly led to Apple's next great product being leaked out to the world? Hopefully Gray gets to keep his job because anyone could of made that same mistake.

Original story found on GIZMODO

RIA - HCL and Silverlight

I was reading this report by HCL guys about how online shopping could be more like real life shopping experience. As we all know how HTML limits our capability to make such applications which are not so user friendly. According to them and as we all know that Adobe Flex and AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, JavaFX, OpenLaszlo, and AJAX are those RIA (Rich Internet Application) enablers which makes apps so much better.

I think if really want to develop such applications, we have to think just like end users. We have to go beyond the restrictions caused by coding limitations.
I think Silverlight is something which is an upcoming thing.



As Microsoft says :

Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating rich media applications and business applications for the Web, desktop, and mobile devices.

Silverlight is a free plug-in powered by the .NET framework that is compatible across multiple browsers, devices and operating systems to bring a new level of interactivity wherever the Web works. With support for advanced data integration, multithreading, HD video using IIS Smooth Streaming, and built in content protection, Silverlight enables online and offline applications for a broad range of business and consumer scenarios.

The cool thing about silverlight is we don't have to write code separatly for browser or device compatibility purposes. I think it is another technology we need to learn to get better at creating rich internet applications. You can join silverlight developer community. I think it is worth giving a try. for the site click here : CLICK

After learning AJAX, i just can't searching more and more about it and to see how develpoers use it their projects.

Final blog

It was easier at the beginning of the semester to find things to blog about, but lately I've been really struggling to think of topics that I wanted to blog about. Similarly, sifting through the existing blogs today, I found quite a few of them were about their last blog. I figured I'd follow suit.

This semester is my last semester at EMU as an undergrad, and I can honestly say, it couldn't end sooner. I learned a lot this semester, especially in this class. While blogging wasn't new to me, I learned that it could be more than just a few sentences, no matter how unlikely that is, at least from me.

My group will be wrapping up our group project in the next few days, and I'm kind of excited to finish it up. It seems like I have to wrap up a big project in every one of my classes this week, on top of that I'm starting a new full time job, so this week will definitely be a crazy one. I'm looking up though, things will definitely be interesting in the few months to follow.

AJAX Programming Language

When I first started this class I was frightened by the Ajax programming language. Asynchronous Javascript and XML is what AJAX stands for and that alone would scare any newcomer to this programming language. All AJAX really does is refresh the part of your webpage that needs refreshing without refreshing the whole page.

The main part of AJAX is the XMLHttpRequest, which fetches information from an outside server and brings it back to the user requesting the information. XMLHttpRequest was first implemented into Internet Explorer 4, then shortly after was added on to all existing browsers. AJAX is really a fancy form of Javascript.

For more information click here.

This class has taught me quite a bit about AJAX. To become familiar with AJAX you really need to have a strong background in Javascript. Also you need to have some experience with if/then statements and the basic structure of programming languages. The most important thing that I can take away from this class is that when it comes to programming languages patience is a must.

Facebooks new safety center

Facebook recently redesigned their safety center which is aimed at parents, educators, law enforcement officials and teens. It was launched on Tuesday, and was created to make sure that the site's 400 million users are networking safely.

Joe Sullivan, Facebooks Chief Security Officer, says that the site is more efficient now, although he doesn't include a reason as to why it is more efficient. I think that he just thinks that saying it is will make people think that they are safer when using Facebook?

Privacy settings are also explained in detail on the new page, as well as how to block users, remove unwanted content from a profile page and anonymously report abusive behavior. The online center is a result of Facebook’s collaboration with its Safety Advisory Board.

Finally finished group project

So we finally finished our group project today, still needs a little changing but at least the 4 API's are there. It took us some time today at the library but it feels good. Just have to type one more blog and I'll be all set.

So while working on our project we found a great API to help with the weather. It shows the current weather of any area you chose. It was pretty simple to implement pulls from the site and shows it on our site. We used www.weatherreports.com to pull the information.

I like the simplicity of the way they show the weather, also I like how it was simple to implement into our site. I'm relieved to have finished our project and after my last blog I will be graduating in 1 week.

Javascript

One language that was prominent in our class was Javascript. Javascript came about from Brendan Eich who was hired by Netscape in early 1995. It was Netscape's desire to make Javascript support more accessible to non-Javascript programmers. This language was originally called LiveScript but on December 4th, 1995 Netscape and Sun Microsystems officially named this web programming language Javascript. Javascript should not be confused with Java, which is a totally different language.

What made Javascript so great is no special compilers were needed to make this programming language work. All that was needed was a word processing program and an FTP program. Javascript offered great possibilities to web pages. Instead of boring, static web pages Javascript offered new life to web pages in the form of animations and interactions with the user.

Read more about the history of Javascript here.

I learned quite a bit about the Javascript language in IS 449. In the beginning Javascript gave me many gray hairs but once I became acquainted with the basic syntax of the language it was not so bad after all. The Javascript syntax is very similar to C++. Javascript does offer a great set of tools to a web designer who wants to add excitement to their web pages.

Time To Step-Up : Ajax with ASP.Net

So whats next after Ajax ... since we all now realize the presence of Ajax almost everywhere in the web world. We should explore all kinds of ways to do asynchronous programming. Everytime I try to find something interesting it is somehow connected to Microsoft. As professor Drake was talking about Jquery and that is one of the JavaScript libraries which can be used for our web applications and we don't really have to do a lot of javascripting.

I am with you on how programming can be so painful especially JavaScript. And how Professor Drake waited till last class to tell us about jQuery as he wanted us to go through the not so good learning process for Ajaxing.

I want to elaborate more on javascript libraries.The Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network (CDN) enables us to easily add popular JavaScript libraries to our Web applications. For example, we can start using jQuery simply by adding a script tag to your page that points to Ajax.microsoft.com. The Microsoft Ajax CDN enables browsers to reuse cached JavaScript files for Web sites that are located in different domains.
The Microsoft Ajax CDN includes the following libraries:
• jQuery
• jQuery Validation
• Ajax Control Toolkit
• ASP.NET Ajax
• ASP.NET MVC JavaScript Files
The another cool thing is The Ajax Control Toolkit, which contains a set of controls that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled ASP.NET Web Forms applications. And one more thing which I want to mention is the Ajax Minifier which is a command-line tool and a Visual Studio Build Task that enables us to minify JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheet files. This enables our websites to run faster by making scripts and CSS files as small as possible. You must download the Microsoft Ajax Minifier before you build the Ajax Control Toolkit.
To get started I am uploading a link where you can find Video tutorials which will help you to learn how to use Ajax in ASP.Net and even if you are just beginning to learn ASP.NEt, even then it would be useful for all of us: Click Here

Indrani Medhi - Human Computer Interaction

This is the age of making impossible possible. I am amazed at how world is evolving as one single entity. I truly believe that Technology is the most important or may be the only factor making it possible. Technology is bringing the whole world all together. Its funny that I am coming up with different ideas to blog up at almost end of the semester. I was stressed out before about being admitted to the Master's program and all the paper work I have to do to get in. Finally I am admitted to the MSIS program at EMU and I feel so much better now.
Anyways back to the topic, Indrani is a student of design and she has been working on text-free user interfaces for illiterate and semi-literate users.

She has developed text-free user interfaces (UIs). These are design guidelines that would enable any first-time illiterate person, on first contact with a computer, to immediately realize useful interaction with minimal or no assistance. Isn't this great!

There is a huge population in India and many other developing countries who are way too away from technology. I was surprise when I came to America that there are people here who can barely read or write. I think this kind of technology will be useful to so many different countries and not just India.
"Medhi's applications are based on a few key principles: extensive use of hand-drawn, semi-abstracted cartoons with voice annotation in the local language, aggressive mouse-over functionality, a consistent help feature, and looping full-context video dramatizing the purpose and mechanism of the application. She has applied these principles to design four applications: job-search for the informal labor market, health-information dissemination, a mobile money-transfer system, and an electronic map. "Medhi has painstakingly and methodically conducted research to understand how to design user interfaces for computing devices such that illiterate and semi-literate users can use them. She has spent a lot of time in the slum communities understanding the needs and aspirations of the people of those communities and their daily lives," says Kentaro Toyama, former assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India."

Check Technology Review India for further Info : Click Here

F# - Hmmmm.....

I was reading recent blog by Don Syme who is a principal researcher at Microsoft research. He is also the inventor of the new programming language called the F#. Initially I was like "oh my god, another language by Microsoft. They just can't have enough of them." I was curious to look into this language and see how different it is from others.

This langauge is already quite used by the .Net community but still new and different. The reason I am writing about this langauge because this claims to make asynchronous programming easier.

Now the reason it is called F # ( F sharp ) is Microsoft claims it to be FUN language or a very Functional language to work with. In lay man terms it is language which helps you execute complex programs using very simple code. This langauge is meant for the .Net framework.

“Functional programming offers important new ways to think about problem solving. The F# Interactive lets developers work interactively with data and application-programming interfaces [APIs] in a lightweight, explorative environment. F# also provides a set of core features for making parallel and asynchronous programming easier.”

It took them almost five years to develop this language. It can work on varied platforms like Linux, MAC including Windows. It has a great tool bag which provides you with various functions making it user friendly.

The Visual Studio release includes important new features of F#:

• A simple, succinct functional syntax.


• A rich .NET object-oriented programming model.


• Integrated parallel and asynchronous programming features.


• Units of measure.


• F# Interactive.

Microsoft do not claim it to be replacing C# at all. The interesting fact about F# is that you can use its functions in already existing C# and visual basic projects. Well I am definitely excited to try this new language and see how can I do asynchronous programming with it although it could be used for various purposes from scientific analysis to Game develpoment and much more.

If you want more info check out this article - Click

14. Library of congress to archive tweets

Yes, I made It to blog 14. Is everyone on twitter? It seems only yesterday people were asking what is a tweet. Even the government believe that tweets should be saved for historical reasons. The library of congress plans to archive tweets. In total twitter users send more than 50 million tweets a day. There is approximately 104 million twitter users. Library congress states that they will not archive personal tweets but only the ones they consider scholarly and for research.

The library uses this opportunity to embrace the digital media. Library is trying to used updated forms of communication for research and historical purposes. Twitter CEO agreed to allow the archived files to be saved by congress. Twitter CEO is excited about the news.

So if you are on twitter just think your tweets could be saved forever in library of congress catalogs. A hundred years later people can for whatever reason view what you were talking about on twitter. Its going to be an expensive process but i don't see myself looking up old tweets at the library.

Google Cloud Printing

Yes the end is almost here. But any ways my blog for the week is about google cloud printing. Well google keep concocting ideas and there new one is prints. Google labs is planning to create an application that allows users to print from any internet based computer. according to techworldnews.com the google cloud print is said to revolve around google operating system, Chrome. All the applications are said to be webbased.

It seems that printers must be cloud aware. Google would have to work with the manufactuers of printers to get there idea up and running., since none are cloud print ready. The printers would have to connect through google through a proxy.

Several issues with cloud printing are privacy and securtiy. Google plans to combat any issue with with the two by allowing only authorized users to print from printers and keeping private information only availble to the person who requested the print. I think that cloud print will work for google but how well i don't know.

Blog 14

When I started blogging it was easy to come up with topics to discuss. Then towards the end of the semester it got harder to come up with ideas to blog about. Now, I'm finally finished.

Using the class blog has been a very useful way to communicate my progress on projects and discuss different topics. It has also been a useful way to get information from others. There were times that I didn't want to blog but it was a necessary and helpful part of IS449.

So this is it. Blog 14. I just want to say thank you to everyone in class for sharing their information. There was a lot of new things I learned from all of your post.

Success!!

I have been working hard trying to get my site to work. I have only been able to retrieve data using the proxy pass-through and return the XML in raw format. I wasn't able to get anything to display properly.

Initially I used the Chronicling America API which gives newspaper information. Since I couldn't make it work and display, I tried the Wine Blog API. Then I had success! I was able to retrieve the XML with the proxy pass-through and parse it in my JavaScript to display the title and description.


It may not seem much to some, but I'm very excited that I finally got something, anything, to display properly. I plan to continue to see what other things I can do with this. The endless hours of working on this has paid off.

Group Iteration 3

Although things didn't go so well for my individual iteration3, the group site turned out great. Adam really went above and beyond with this project. Of course he has a lot of prior knowledge and experience. Here is what our site looks like:


Our site uses several API's to create a place for users to find jobs by location, get detailed information for a career, see housing and weather information for that location, and view the location and career on the map. Our group has completed all of the requirements for iteration 3 and maybe a little more. The site is better than our original ideas.

I am very happy that we completed our iteration and how everyone worked well together. As we have seen in this class, all of the groups came up with great ideas for their projects. I look forward to finding other ways to use API's and create different sites.

Individual Iteration 3

Well I was not as successful as I wanted to be for this iteration. My plan for my project was to use the Chronicling America API with the Google Maps API to display newspapers by location. This is how my site looked for iteration 2.



I started to parse the XML but I had a lot of difficulty getting it to work. The information would not display properly. I tried to parse the XML in JavaScript without success so I am now trying to parse in the PHP instead.

Besides completing the requirements for this course, I would still like to complete this iteration for myself. Creating Mashups and integrating web services is a great skill to have. I plan to continue working on my project and hope that I can get it to display successfully.

CNET is not one of them

Okay so here we are at the end of the semester and still struggling with the API's and thier annoying documentation. You are lucky if you get the right information at the right time to do the coding for your project. The most difficult part is to understand the API documentation because either they have loads of information to bombard at you or they have nothing to offer accept API service.

So the new problem is that apparently CNET api's cool cool dashboard is not working. What I was thinking of doing was to show reviews of play stations and etc from CNET's Games And Gear category. Now the next step is that you need a category ID to call their web service for this particular category.

Now I looked into the documentation and they have ID's specified only for some of the most popular categories used by the developers but not all of them. It is quite surprising that nobody used their category of games and gear but mp3 players and televisions etc. So next thing I did was to go to forum to check if somebody else was facing the same problem. And there was solution to my problem ...there was the URL i could use which gives xml response with all the category ID's in it which you can see if you know how to read XML.
That URL worked and did gave a xml response but it didn't had games and gear as a category in it and I don't know why? And it is also not a child category. So now I gave up on CNET and started doing ebay which now seems better option to me. :-(
Here's the link to the page which shows the request URL which gives the category ID's for CNET...Click

Blog #14

I started my friendly blog counter a couple of weeks ago. I am proud to say that this is blog number 14 for me. It feels good and encouraging that I was able to accomplish the blog task. The more I thought about the easier blogging became for me.

The best thing about blogging for this class is at gave everyone the opportunity to share what they have learned and struggled with in this class. I also like the idea of keeping last semester blog posts on our blog so we can go back and look at some of the issues in the class before us.
I am very excited with the progress I have learned in this class. With my individual project I worked with Google Maps, fanfeedr and weather api. My group project I worked with the youtube api and really enjoyed the documentation on it. The biggest thing left with our group project is getting one more api and I think we will all be very happy with the progress.

I looked around and tried to get some information on how to make blogging more enjoyable when doing it. At times it can be enjoyable when you have something on your mind and want to share it with others. When you are stuck and don't have anything to write, then it can become a challenge. Here is a link to an article on five essential tools to make blogging fun and easy.

Hackers exploit new Java zero-day bug

So since I have 3 blogs left, I was looking around for new's on computers. And the first this I found was pretty relevant to this class. It has to do with songlyrics.com users who would be sent to Russian sites which would attack their computers. So the work they did would hack the site and enter an IFRAME to the site. They also said it attacks new the IE and Firefox servers.

They talk about the upcoming possible copy cats. Because it is so easy to copy and the code is simple. "It's so easy to use and copy that I would expect that it'll be in the [exploit tool]kits in a few days." Roger Thompson said. Roger Thompson is the chief researcher at AVG Technologies.

It looks like there was a conversation about how Travis Ormandy reported to Sun. And they declined to put out a new patch. "They informed me they do not consider this vulnerability to be of high enough priority to break their quarterly patch cycle," Ormandy wrote on the mailing list. "I explained [to them] that I did not agree, and intended to publish advice to temporarily disable the affected control until a solution is available."

The exact site is on computerworld.com. Please check this out more and avoid possible interruptions on your computer.

BLOG 14!!

Here it is the end of the semester and I am writing my final blog. We all know that blogs are traceable. But what is traceable?

Try everything. "Almost anything you do in today's society involves leaving a track," said Doug Klunder of the American Civil Liberties Union. He's the director of the ACLU of Washington's Privacy Project, from the article "In the digital world, we trade privacy for convenience."

We are tracked almost from the moment we wake up. Our cell phone track are movements, our cars are video taped by camera capable of recognizing license plate numbers and each and every click is tracked.

11 million people were victims of identity theft last year alone. The article found that people between the ages of 18 and 24 are more likely to revel personal data, thus making themselves targets.

Evan Ratliff tried to live a year with out leaving a trace. His readers were able to track him and eventually find him.

Ratliff said paranoia and suspicion quickly set in when he was on the run. There was little romance to living like a fugitive, he said.

"It's hard to let go of that idea that if you really did it right, you could end up on a beach in South America for the rest of your life drinking margaritas," he said. "That's always still there, but I think the actual process of living on the run in the United States -- in the end, it's almost never going to be worth it."

Indexing Tweeter Trail

No longer will your Tweets from Twitter be only seen by your followers and friends for just a few days or weeks. Google is now indexing all of peoples tweets in a big, searchable database. Recently Google has announced that it has a new search feature that lets users look at the entire history of tweets in anytime frame and in any subject. This new feature is set to debut in the next few days.

All you would have to do now is enter the search term and select the update option then with a click of a button you will find results of tweets on that search condition dating back to February 2010. And Google in working on progressing this date back feature to eventually get all of the past tweets dating back to the first one made on March 21, 2006.

Here is a example of the new feature

With this new Google made feature you can see all tweets on a specific day, month or even year with the handy graph that is displayed at the top of the page results. Google says that these features are pretty useful because you can see what people we talking about on a day of a major event or significant occurrence. But for those people who want to keep their privacy, you don't have to be included in this feature because you have the option of having your time line public or not.

New Cisco Router Supports 322Tbps

Bandwidth at the speed of light? Maybe not but Cisco's new router will supports speeds up to 322 Tbps. What does this new phenomenon speed compare to? Cisco says that with this speed is enough to allow every person in China to make a video call at the same time. And with this new hardware it can be achieved.

The company's new large scale core router is call CRS-3, the CRS stands forCarrier Routing System. Cisco boasts that this new router is 12 times as fast as its nearest competitor and it is 3 times the speed of its predecestor. With this new found technology and hardware did not come cheap, the company stated that it spent $1.6 billion in the product's design and engineering.

Here is the break down of what 322 Tbps is, Tbps is terrabits per second and a terabit is a trillion bits. Now compare that to the mbps(megabits per second) that today's highest speed consumers and business broadband speed connections are measured in. Here are a few of the feats that 322 Tbps could do: Transmitting every motion picture ever made in5 minutes, downloading the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in 1 second, or transmiting the entire DNA sequence of 56,000 people also in 1 second.

Test your Internet Speed

Testing is being prefomed now and CEO John Chambers estimated the router to be available before the end of this year. It also comes with a pretty expensive price tag, reporting that pricing will start at $90,000.

Google AJAX API's

Looking for a good API, look no further than who else, Google. Google has taken the industry by storm with all of it applications and gadgets within the past couple of years or so. So what else could they come up with, some good AJAX API's. Working on my last individual project, I was stuck and could not get my web page to fix the output format of the feed I was using from the previous individual project. So I do what I usually do when I cannot find something I need, I Google'd API. And in the search results I found googles site for AJAX API's.

Google AJAX APIs

I knew google had the google maps API but didn't think about if they had any more until I looked up in their search engine and to my satisfaction I found what I needed. Google has a range of AJAX API's such as Google Maps, Google Search, Google Feed, Google Book Search and Google language just to name about half of them. These AJAX APIs cover a wide range of applications that you might want to use in the future if you are in that kind of web page creating field.

And to help you out with coding and writing script Google has also given you tools to make your job a little bit easier with Interatctive Code playground. This helps you edit and find mistakes in your code that can help your API run effiecienty. And Google has also provided Google API libraries for Google Web Toolkit and this is a collection of libraries that provide Java language bindings for popular Google Javascript APIs.

3D TV: Not for the Drunk, Tired, or Pregnant

With the buzz going around about the new 3D TV's coming out and those that are already in the market, there is something new, bold and interesting for consumers to pay a good chunk of income for, but is it all worth it? Companies such as Sharp, LG and Samsung are all trying to add new enhancements and new features to their production of 3D TV's but at what cost to the consumers?

There is a 3D warning to consumers who are either a pregnant woman, a teenager or a drunk; yes that included people who like their alcohol, that they should not necessarily be watching this new phenomenon. And this is no joke, the creator of one of the 3D TV's; Samsung, has in fact issued this warning. And here is the proof Samsung 3D TV Warning.

And these were some of their statements:Children and teenagers may be more susceptible to health issues associated with viewing in 3D and should be closely supervised when viewing these images and that pregnant women, the elderly, sufferers of serious medical conditions, those who are sleep deprived or under the influence of alcohol should avoid utilizing the unit's 3D functionality. (Samsung.com)

And one of the surprising statement warnings that they have issued is that even without those restrictions that some people can still become disoriented by viewing the 3D. Although I have read all the warnings, I still like my chances and will give 3D TV a try.

DOM Is Not So Bad

After studying the DOM (document object model) for a couple of weeks it is not so difficult after all. In fact, the DOM makes things very easy by breaking down the XML into sections (trees) by their order in the document. Once you get the server to pull the XML from the API's server the rest is surprisingly easy.

Once the code is pulled up from the server onto your server you just use Javascript to parse the XML. For instance, lets say you have a tag that contains the price data. You would get the price tag data by assigning a variable to it. For example, var price = requestDocEbay.getElementsByTagName("price")[0];. The code is looking for the "price" tag then going no further. Next you have to assign a variable to get the data from the first tag node. You do this with the following code. var priceText = price.firstChild.nodeValue. What this code does is get the data from inside the tag. You can find a great example on page 361 from our textbook. This is the example I used for the group project and it works out great.

For further insight please check out the following links.




IBM Article




Cover Pages

The DOM may seem intimidating at first but don't let it scare you. It really helps to break down the DOM into little pieces. Do each section of your code, that way the code is not huge and does not scare you away with pages of code. Finally I can say this has been a good week of programming!!

iPad has Wi-Fi problems

Surprise surprise!! Just as I suspected Apple is having problems with a new release. It's always the loyal fan boys who go out and buy something right away that end up with the bugs and get stuck with a defective unit. Almost immediately after an initial release a new version of something is released that is better. You should always wait to buy something.

This article talks about how many users are having problems with the Wi-Fi in the initial release of the Wi-Fi only iPad. It's not just beginners having issues either, technology experts who write blogs on different technologies are having problems with it as well. On Apple's support website there were 11 pages of comments last Tuesday morning on a post saying Wi-Fi connections were weak or kept cutting out.

Apples answer to this? "Apple posted a Web page outlining troubleshooting tips for "occasional problems" that included weak Wi-Fi connections or not being able to find a signal. The tips include moving closer to a Wi-Fi router or hot spot and making sure the Wi-Fi router is plugged in and the power is turned on. The Web page also suggests checking for sources of possible interference, like a microwave oven, and making sure you're connected to the correct Wi-Fi connection if multiple ones are available." So if their technology fails then they treat us like idiots and say make sure the router is plugged in and turned on? Get real...

Group Iteration 3

There is only 1 week left before we have to present our groups iteration 3. I think it's coming together really well. There are a few different API's that we're using. Recently we decided to use the CNET and YouTube APIs. I think they are going to work great together along with the API's that we already have going.

Aman and Joe are working on the CNET API and I think they will be done soon. Aman talks a little bit about working on it in her blog post here. I think that we did a really good job of picking different API's that would go together well for what we are trying to accomplish for iteration 3.

One of my favorite API's will be youtubes API. I think it is really well documented and has a lot of support, which makes it really easy to set up and use. Steven and I worked on it this past weekend and got it to work. We just need to integrate it into our groups website. I'm learning a lot about the different APIs, even though it is pretty painful sometimes.

MacBook Pro update/First FourSquare User to Check In At North Pole

First, I want to talk about how excited I am about the news Apple dropped this morning. They released the long awaited refresh of the MacBook Pro line. I know they are a lot people out there that are saying that it isn't that big of a change or difference between what was previously out. The only "real" upgrade was the 15/17 inch models now sport Intel's current i5/i7 processors instead of the outdated core 2 duo's and now there is an option to add a high res screen to the laptops. I know thats not a big deal to others but to me this is what I have been waiting for. If you guys remember I think I mentioned in my first post of the semester that my apartment was broken into and one of my prize possessions stolen was my MacBook Pro. Well I have purposely waited four months without jumping the gun and buying a new one because I knew a refresh would be coming soon and didn't want to pay the same amount of money on soon to be outdated hardware. Now I'm glad I have waited.

My feature story is about the 15 year old pictured above. His name is Parker Liautaud and for at least a little while, he is going to be known as a big deal. Why you ask? Well thanks to social media/networks becoming so big in todays world, Parker was achieve a feat that has not been attempted in the growing Foursquare universe.

Parker will go down as the very first person to check-in from the North Pole and the Last Degree Badge. Now I'm not too familiar with Foursquare but after reading up a little bit on it, it can be describe as almost a game of tag, using Google Latitude approach. You can see where your friends are and get little messages (Twitter Style) from them and also "Check-In" at all kinds of different locations around your area. Although I guess its pretty cool for this 15 year old to get his 15mins of fame from this, but it was a pretty dangerous way to spend your Spring Break. Hopefully he had more motivating factors to accomplish this other than "Checking In" on Four Square.

Story from Mashable

Boy racks up $1400 tab on Farmville

I found this crazy article on cnn.com. I found it to be hilarious, and infuriating at the same time. I think I would go nuts if my kid spent that much on a game.

There aren't many details in terms of the boys age or anything like that, it just says that he was a preteen. I'm assuming that he must have been around 8-12 years old. It says that he emptied out his savings account and then stole his moms credit card and started buying things with that. When asked why he did it he said that "they had brought out good stuff that I wanted."

She says that she wishes that there was more security to prevent things like this from happening again. I agree to a certain extent. I think that first she needs to teach her son that stealing is wrong. Also, that spending this much money on frivolous things that you will not see a return on just stupid. She needs to teach him the value of money. If I was the parent here, I'd make him work it off by doing chores, and also take away the computer/tv/video games.

Individual Iteration 3

I spent quite a bit of time on Iteration 3. I posted it here. It's not exactly what I wanted, but I had to make some compromises because I couldn't figure out how to get it work the way I wanted it to, and I was running out of time. It was pretty frustrating, but I think I'm happy with the way it ended up.

The way I wanted it to work was to have you click on a team from the drop down menu. After you did this I wanted to have the teams address show up on the map, and show up under the map. Eventually I would have added a box for the user to enter their address and get driving directions. I think this would have been a great tool for any sports fan that lives in Detroit. Obviously it probably would have been obsolete at this point because of GPS systems.

The way it ended up working is the user clicks the drop down box and selects a team. Then the map shows them where the home of that team is. If you click the teams logo under the map then it'll show the user the teams address.

AJAX Is Not Just For Cleaning

As the semester is winding down, I thought I would write my final blog about what I have learned in IS 449. The first thing I learned was about MashUps. This is a really cool technology and I think it is really going to take off in the next few years as soon as more people realize what really can be done with it. Being able to search several sites at the same time is going to be the future of the Internet. I have also learned that not all Head First books are not as good as the html version.

Another thing I learned was that AJAX was not a cleanser used to clean the bathtub and sink. AJAX is a very complex and unforgiving coding language that can either make really nice things happen or really bad things to happen. Now when I look around the Internet I see AJAX everywhere and see how important knowing about is. I also learned that the COB is now closed on the weekends and that student center is not the best place to work on coding. I also learned about API and that the IMDB does not have one for whatever reason.

As I reflect on this class and my time coming to end at Eastern, I feel good, nervous, sad and little perplexed about where I am going to go from here. Whatever happens I feel good to e graduating in two weeks and moving on to wherever the world is going to take me. I wish the whole class the best, especially for all those graduating. Good luck everyone, I will miss you all.