Now that the course is over...

I believe the take home message of this course was to open our eyes to web 2.0 and all of the things it can do. Before the class I had never heard of web 2.0 and therefore never heard of the applications and ways to use them. This class taught me to look at the internet in a new way. There are so many possibilities of what can be done with the web. For example, with mashups I never knew it could be so easy to create things like placing housing prices on maps.

Something that you could have tested us on was to ask us how we plan on using what we learned in the future. That could show if we really learned anything, and essentially what the take home message for us was. I think that how we will use what we learned in our future is one of the most important things to take away from a class

CIS Presents – IT Major/Minor

The IT major or minor are two fields of study that Bentley College offers. A few teachers spoke about this field and what it has to offer. IT is something that affects everyone’s life and this cheap ubiquitous computing is improving people’s life around the world. The CIS majors are among the most highly sought after students in the market with a salary ranging from $52,000 to $102,000. These students have been employed with companies such as IBM, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, UBS, and Deloitte Consulting. This career is about finding a successful job as a technology expert that can provide immediate value to their employer by integrating business and technology into business solutions. IT jobs can focus on application development, IT infrastructure, data management, and modeling with the intent to create high-value business solutions.

CIS Presents – Microsoft

A student representative from Microsoft came to our school and talked to us about Microsoft’s new program, XNA. XNA is a program that lets you create games that you can play on your Xbox. Doing this normally usually takes hours and hours of difficult coding. With XNA, all of the startup code you would normally have to write is already done for you and putting a game together is very simple. The representative also talked about his job with Microsoft and said the qualifications for being a student representative were that you had to be passionate about technology, outgoing, be a good presenter, and have an intermediate knowledge of .net and visual studio. The benefits were that he got monetary compensation twice a semester and a MSDN universal subscription worth $11,000 that give him access to all Microsoft programs. In addition, being a representative gives him a unique job opportunity because of all of his experience.

CIS Presents – The Financial Aid Podcast

With the internet evolving every single day, the Podcast has found itself becoming a very easy way to get yourself and your message out onto the internet. Chris Penn, the creator of the financial aid podcast visited Bentley College to talk to us about podcasting. Chris focused on new media and how each piece of media now has a specific function and process. With old media, people sat in front of analog devices and watched media passively. With new media, people can create digital works and distribute them to millions of people very easily. There is also a new aspect of participation that gives people the ability to influence the media that is presented to you. When you create a podcast, you have the ability to compete with huge record companies and news figures because all podcasts are broadcasted evenly. One of Chris’s last pieces of advice was creating your own brand. Everyone is the best at something, and once you figure that out you can create a brand about YOU, and distribute your message all over the internet.

Linux

In our IT class we had the opportunity to run Linux (Mepis version)on our computers. It was definitely an odd experience to see a different operating system running on my laptop. I have never owned a PC that ran anything other than windows so it was hard to get used to. It reminded me a lot of the operating system that a Mac uses because of the way icons acted when pressed, and the toolbar. When comparing Open Office with Word and Excel I found that the Linux versions seemed like very old Windows programs. Open Office did not have all the features of the new Microsoft Office applications like creating very attractive looking charts and graphic effects. Also, in Linux there were a lot fewer fonts that in windows. I was not able to open my Excel project in Open office Spreadsheet. I believe this is because of how the new Microsoft Office 2007 adds the extra X onto the extensions, for example, docx and xlsx.

Social Bookmarking

When looking at the Social Book marking sites, Del.icio.us and Digg, I found that I liked Digg more. Both sites do an excellent job of providing a central place that people can collaborate their favorite bookmarks, but I like the layout of Digg better. Diggs website seems to me more user friendly and its appearance is nicer. I also like the content that Digg users bookmark or vote for, on the sites “top in 24 hr” option because the content is more entertaining. However, I think Del.icio.us has users that bookmark more informative articles and videos. I think Social Bookmarking can be very valuable because it allows you to easily finds things that are related to a certain topic. Also, it allows you to see some of the most recent and informative or entertaining websites out there because the users immediately bookmark something they like.

http://www.digg.com/
http://del.icio.us/yankyfan100

RSS Feeds

The author of the article “7 Things you should know about RSS” claims that [RSS] “has the potential to become the primary vehicle through which users interact with the Internet.” I agree with his statement because it is so simple and easy to use. You can get a lot of information that focuses only on your interests, in one place. For RSS to become the primary vehicle through which users interact with the internet, more websites need to offer RSS feeds and more people need to become familiar with this aspect of web 2.0. A company would incorporate RSS feeds into its online offerings in order to give users another way to get information from their website. Some websites that I frequently visit and offer RSS feeds are, http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=nyy, http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm, and http://bentley.edu/.

War Driving

I found my wireless access at Panera in Waltham. The name of the SSID of the network I was connecting to was PANERA. There was no WEP key required, and the wireless access was free. I think it was free because Panera wants costumers to have a access to the internet to draw more costumers to the store. I think it is ok to have an unsecured network only in situations like Panera in which the provider wants to give out free access. Now that I have found wifi on the go I can surf the web, and check my email in a new place, while I’m eating a tasty Panera sandwich.
You can see how the signal strength is very high which means i must have been close to the access point. However, it was hidden and i could not find out exactly where it was.

Spyware and Adware

CCleaner seems to be a very useful program. It deletes all temporary files such as cookies and internet history while also emptying your trash etc. Surprisingly the program cleaned up an estimated 456mb of unnecessary files from a PC that has only been running a couple weeks. This amount will quickly add up and start wasting large amounts of space on your C drive.

AVG Anti-Spyware is another very useful program. AVG scans your PC for intrusive spyware that is running without you knowing. After one scan, 30 infected objects or 129 infected traces were found. This again was found on a computer that has been used for no more than two weeks. It is very surprising to see how quickly spyware can add up on your computer.

Between spyware and adware I believe that spyware is more dangerous to have on your computer. This is because adware has a different concept behind it than spyware. Adware is placed on your computer when you download a free trial of a program. While running a company’s free software they will allow advertisements to run on your desktop which should end when the program is closed. Most of the time adware is a legitimate way that companies gather revenue and should not be worried about. Spyware on the other hand is downloaded onto your computer and can be harmful.

Spyware can monitor your web surfing habits and relay information back to the spyware creator. Information sent back can consist of email addresses, passwords, credit card numbers, or even every single keystroke entered. The most common way an individual can get spyware on their PC is through downloading peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs.

I believe some software contain spyware and adware to gain shopping and web surfing habits along with personal information in order to know where to advertise certain products. Once this information is collected companies can target certain groups of people to see the company’s advertisements. From this targeted advertisement, a company can gain customers and revenue in return.

Me

Hey, my name is Anthony Artese and I am in IT 101x at Bentley College. I am from Westchester New York.